The Insane Engineering That Built Louisiana

The gate that keeps a Mississippi flood out of New Orleans is made of lumber. The wall around it is concrete, but the gate is seven thousand wooden beams, and when the river climbs, cranes lift them out and let the Mississippi pour into a lake on purpose. That gate is only number four on this list. This is eleven pieces of engineering that built Louisiana, ranked by what the state would lose if each one quit. We start with the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, which needed a road made of water before it could have a road, and climb through the Louisiana Superdome and its nearly ten acre roof, the Huey P. Long Bridge, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port out in the Gulf south of Grand Isle, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, A. Baldwin Wood's screw pump, the Bonnet Carre Spillway, James Eads and the South Pass jetties in Plaquemines Parish, and the Morganza Spillway in Pointe Coupee Parish. Number one sits where the Mississippi, the Red and the Atchafalaya meet. In 1973 a foreman there got on the radio and said, "We ain't got no wing wall." How did your family say Bonnet Carre, and who corrected you? WATCH NEXT ▶ [paste the Exploring Louisiana playlist link] SUBSCRIBE ▶    / @louisianauncovered   Historical documentary. Names, dates, and cases are drawn from the public record and published reporting. Some footage is illustrative. #Louisiana #LouisianaUncovered #Engineering