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The locks and dam located here are part of a much larger system of 29 locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River. This series of locks and dams operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains a nine-foot channel on the Mississippi from St. Paul, MN to St. Louis, MO.

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CLICK HERE to find out how many locks and dams are on the Mississippi River.
Fisherman's Corner Recreation area has become one of the premier campgrounds on the banks of the Mississippi River. Located just above Lock and Dam 14 in Hampton, this busy little park has a wonderful view of Lock and Dam 14 and the small nearby marsh just above the dam is full of wildlife.

The locks and dam located here are part of a much larger system of 29 locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River. This series of locks and dams operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains a nine-foot channel on the Mississippi from St. Paul, MN to St. Louis, MO.

Pleasure craft, towboats and barges all use this "stairway of water" to travel the river segments which were once too shallow to navigate. The marsh is home to countless numbers of waterfowl, shore birds, and even several flocks of white pelicans. With a name like Fisherman's Corner, there has to be fishing. Shoreline fishing is available at the separate Fisherman's Corner South day use area, adjacent to the campgrounds. The open water below Lock and Dam 14 provides nearly year-round fishing for walleye, sauger, catfish, blue gill, striped bass and freshwater drum.

Across the river from Fisherman's Corner is another recreation area known as Smith's Island. It is a day use area designed for walkers, runners and people who enjoy the great outdoors. There is great fishing all around the island and you are welcome to try your luck. There are two picnic shelters with electricity and water to provide a wonderful place to gather for lunch with two open grills for cooking.

Smith's Island does not flood because of its higher elevation and close proximity to Lock and Dam 14. Therefore, many species of trees and plants found on Smith's Island are rarely found on any other island on the Upper Mississippi River floodplain.

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How many locks and dams are on the Mississippi River?

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CLICK HERE to find out how many locks and dams are on the Mississippi River. Fisherman's Corner Recreation area has become one of the premier campgrounds on the banks of the Mississippi River.

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The flood control plan is designed to control the "project flood." It is a flood larger than the record flood of 1927. At Cairo, the project flood is estimated at 2,360,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). The project flood is 11 percent greater than the flood of 1927 at the mouth of the Arkansas River and 29 percent greater at the latitude of Red River Landing, amounting to 3,030,000 cfs at that location, about 60 miles below Natchez.

Description of Plan

The four major elements of the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project are: levees for containing flood flows; floodways for the passage of excess flows past critical reaches of the Mississippi; channel improvement and stabilization for stabilizing the channel in order to provide an efficient navigation alignment, increase the flood-carrying capacity of the river, and for protection of the levees system; and tributary basin improvements for major drainage and for flood control, such as dams and reservoirs, pumping plants, auxillary channels, and the like.

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New Orleans District > Missions > Mississippi River Flood Control > Mississippi River & Tributaries

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The official public website of the New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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A levee is a large earthen embankment that is used to contain the Mississippi River. They are largely just mounds of dirt covered in sod. The Mississippi has 3,500 miles of levees running its banks averaging almost 25 feet in height. There's nothing complicated about a levee. The main difficulty, really, is getting enough dirt to build these huge artificial hills. When a hole breaks in a levee, it's called a crevasse. Some get famous enough to have names.

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What Humans Have Done

John McPhee locates the beginning of the problem with the Mississippi way back at the founding of New Orleans. By 1724, a decree to build levees had already been promulgated. Things have only gotten worse since then. By 1812, there were already hundreds of miles of levee along the west bank. By the time of the great 1927 flood, there were 1500 miles of levees, and that was only the beginning. It was the Flood Control Act of 1928 and various addenda that would create and refine the Mississippi River and Tributaries project, which is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps made this film to highlight their role in shaping the river according to Congress' wishes. Ignore the soaring triumphant tone and just look at what the workers are doing to the river. This is how we changed the Mississippi forever.

Levees. A levee is a large earthen embankment that is used to contain the Mississippi River. They are largely just mounds of dirt covered in sod. The Mississippi has 3,500 miles of levees running its banks averaging almost 25 feet in height. There's nothing complicated about a levee. The main difficulty, really, is getting enough dirt to build these huge artificial hills. When a hole breaks in a levee, it's called a crevasse. Some get famous enough to have names.

Weirs. A weir is like a dam that is designed to be topped. That is to say, it's a structure that's built under the surface of the river's water to change the flow characteristics of the water. Bendway weirs are a popular concept for reducing the erosion and meandering problems noted above. Weirs angled upstream appear to cut down on the amount of erosion on the outer bank of the river by minimizing the secondary currents of the river spinning outward. Over 190 bendway weirs have been built in the Mississippi since 1989.

Dredging. Since 1930, the Army Corps of Engineers has been tasked with dredging the river to maintain a nine-foot deep navigation channel. That action takes place upriver using a boat operated by the Corps' St. Paul district called The Goetz Dredge. "Under optimum conditions, the dredge can pump as much as 1,300 cubic yards per hour as far as 1,650 feet and up to 800 feet inland," the Corps says. "Booster pumps are sometimes used in combination with the Goetz to pump material up to approximately 10,000 feet."

Revetments. Revetments are a way of strengthening the outer bank of a river to keep it from eroding. Over 360 miles of the river in the New Orleans district alone have been revetted. A popular kind of revetment on the Mississippi is basically a massive " concrete mat." In the video above, you can see one being built. In essence, thin concrete blocks held together by metal are created on land, loaded onto a ship, and dropped into the river.

The Old River Control Structure. The Mississippi really wants to flow down a different path than the one that it currently does. Rather than its current route, gravity is driving it to move down the Atchafalaya river bed to the Gulf of Mexico. Humans, having built cities and businesses with the current configuration, don't want this to happen. This is the main narrative of McPhee's outstanding New Yorker story. In essence, we block the river's natural path and divert the water into the Mississippi. That occurs at a former Mississippi tributary called Old River. "Rabalais gestured across the lock toward what seemed to be a pair of placid lakes separated by a trapezoidal earth dam a hundred feet high," McPhee writes. "It weighed five million tons, and it had stopped Old River. It had cut Old River in two. The severed ends were sitting there filling up with weeds. Where the Atchafalaya had entrapped the Mississippi, bigmouth bass were now in charge. The navigation lock had been dug beside this monument. The big dam, like the lock, was fitted into the mainline levee of the Mississippi. In Rabalais's pickup, we drove on the top of the dam, and drifted as wed through Old River country. On this day, he said, the water on the Mississippi side was eighteen feet above sea level, while the water on the Atchafalaya side was five feet above sea level." If the structure that keeps the Mississippi from becoming the Atchafalaya fails, it would be one of the largest catastrophes in American history.

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What We've Done to the Mississippi River: An Explainer

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John McPhee locates the beginning of the problem with the Mississippi way back at the founding of New Orleans. By 1724, a decree to build levees had already been promulgated. Things have only gotten worse since then. By 1812, there were already hundreds of miles of levee along the west bank.

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Cairo to New Madrid, Mo., the east bank bluffs and the levee as originally built on the west bank left only a narrow channel through which the river could flow at flood stage. To protect communities along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and to reduce the flood heights to which the controlling levees on the Missouri side would otherwise be subjected, the project provides for a setback levee about 5 miles west of the riverfront levee through this reach. The strip between this setback levee and the levee adjacent to the river forms what is known as the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, operated only at extremely high stages. Water enters the floodway through lower levee sections or "fuse plugs" in the old front levee below Cairo and reenters the main river just above New Madrid. The floodway was operated in 1937 and was of material aid in reducing flood heights at and above Cairo.

At the latitude of Red River Landing, the project flood is estimated at 3,000,000 cfs. The project provides for dividing this great quantity of water, with 1,500,000 cfs of the flow continuing down the main river channel, the remaining 1,500,000 cfs being diverted to the Atchafalaya River via the Morganza and West Atchafalaya floodways, and the Old River Control structures.

Of the 1,500,000 cfs flowing down the main channel below Morganza Floodway, 250,000 cfs are to be diverted to Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf through the Bonnet Carre' Spillway, located about 25 miles above New Orleans. The remaining 1,250,000 cfs will continue down the river to the Gulf.

That portion of the flow diverted from the main channel near Old River is carried by the Atchafalaya River, the Morganza Floodway, and the West Atchafalaya Floodway. The Morganza and the West Atchafalaya floodways follow down on opposite sides of the Atchafalaya River until the end of the levee system along the Atchafalaya River is reached; there they merge into a single broad floodway that passes the flow to the Gulf through two outlets, Wax Lake and Berwick Bay. In major floods, the Morganza would be the first of these two floodways to be used, with water entering it through a control structure just above Morganza.

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New Orleans District > Missions > Mississippi River Flood Control > Mississippi River & Tributaries

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The official public website of the New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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A weir is like a dam that is designed to be topped. That is to say, it's a structure that's built under the surface of the river's water to change the flow characteristics of the water. Bendway weirs are a popular concept for reducing the erosion and meandering problems noted above. Weirs angled upstream appear to cut down on the amount of erosion on the outer bank of the river by minimizing the secondary currents of the river spinning outward. Over 190 bendway weirs have been built in the Mississippi since 1989.

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What Humans Have Done

John McPhee locates the beginning of the problem with the Mississippi way back at the founding of New Orleans. By 1724, a decree to build levees had already been promulgated. Things have only gotten worse since then. By 1812, there were already hundreds of miles of levee along the west bank. By the time of the great 1927 flood, there were 1500 miles of levees, and that was only the beginning. It was the Flood Control Act of 1928 and various addenda that would create and refine the Mississippi River and Tributaries project, which is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps made this film to highlight their role in shaping the river according to Congress' wishes. Ignore the soaring triumphant tone and just look at what the workers are doing to the river. This is how we changed the Mississippi forever.

Levees. A levee is a large earthen embankment that is used to contain the Mississippi River. They are largely just mounds of dirt covered in sod. The Mississippi has 3,500 miles of levees running its banks averaging almost 25 feet in height. There's nothing complicated about a levee. The main difficulty, really, is getting enough dirt to build these huge artificial hills. When a hole breaks in a levee, it's called a crevasse. Some get famous enough to have names.

Weirs. A weir is like a dam that is designed to be topped. That is to say, it's a structure that's built under the surface of the river's water to change the flow characteristics of the water. Bendway weirs are a popular concept for reducing the erosion and meandering problems noted above. Weirs angled upstream appear to cut down on the amount of erosion on the outer bank of the river by minimizing the secondary currents of the river spinning outward. Over 190 bendway weirs have been built in the Mississippi since 1989.

Dredging. Since 1930, the Army Corps of Engineers has been tasked with dredging the river to maintain a nine-foot deep navigation channel. That action takes place upriver using a boat operated by the Corps' St. Paul district called The Goetz Dredge. "Under optimum conditions, the dredge can pump as much as 1,300 cubic yards per hour as far as 1,650 feet and up to 800 feet inland," the Corps says. "Booster pumps are sometimes used in combination with the Goetz to pump material up to approximately 10,000 feet."

Revetments. Revetments are a way of strengthening the outer bank of a river to keep it from eroding. Over 360 miles of the river in the New Orleans district alone have been revetted. A popular kind of revetment on the Mississippi is basically a massive " concrete mat." In the video above, you can see one being built. In essence, thin concrete blocks held together by metal are created on land, loaded onto a ship, and dropped into the river.

The Old River Control Structure. The Mississippi really wants to flow down a different path than the one that it currently does. Rather than its current route, gravity is driving it to move down the Atchafalaya river bed to the Gulf of Mexico. Humans, having built cities and businesses with the current configuration, don't want this to happen. This is the main narrative of McPhee's outstanding New Yorker story. In essence, we block the river's natural path and divert the water into the Mississippi. That occurs at a former Mississippi tributary called Old River. "Rabalais gestured across the lock toward what seemed to be a pair of placid lakes separated by a trapezoidal earth dam a hundred feet high," McPhee writes. "It weighed five million tons, and it had stopped Old River. It had cut Old River in two. The severed ends were sitting there filling up with weeds. Where the Atchafalaya had entrapped the Mississippi, bigmouth bass were now in charge. The navigation lock had been dug beside this monument. The big dam, like the lock, was fitted into the mainline levee of the Mississippi. In Rabalais's pickup, we drove on the top of the dam, and drifted as wed through Old River country. On this day, he said, the water on the Mississippi side was eighteen feet above sea level, while the water on the Atchafalaya side was five feet above sea level." If the structure that keeps the Mississippi from becoming the Atchafalaya fails, it would be one of the largest catastrophes in American history.

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What We've Done to the Mississippi River: An Explainer

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John McPhee locates the beginning of the problem with the Mississippi way back at the founding of New Orleans. By 1724, a decree to build levees had already been promulgated. Things have only gotten worse since then. By 1812, there were already hundreds of miles of levee along the west bank.

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Stabilization and protection of the riverbanks are important to the flood control and navigation plan, serving to protect flood control features and to insure the desired alignment of the river's navigation channel. This is accomplished by:

Cutoffs | Shortening the river and reduce flood heights.
Revetment | Controlling the river's meandering.
Dikes | Directing the flow.
Improvement Dredging | Realigning the channel.

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Since 1930, the Army Corps of Engineers has been tasked with dredging the river to maintain a nine-foot deep navigation channel. That action takes place upriver using a boat operated by the Corps' St. Paul district called The Goetz Dredge. "Under optimum conditions, the dredge can pump as much as 1,300 cubic yards per hour as far as 1,650 feet and up to 800 feet inland," the Corps says. "Booster pumps are sometimes used in combination with the Goetz to pump material up to approximately 10,000 feet."

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What Humans Have Done

John McPhee locates the beginning of the problem with the Mississippi way back at the founding of New Orleans. By 1724, a decree to build levees had already been promulgated. Things have only gotten worse since then. By 1812, there were already hundreds of miles of levee along the west bank. By the time of the great 1927 flood, there were 1500 miles of levees, and that was only the beginning. It was the Flood Control Act of 1928 and various addenda that would create and refine the Mississippi River and Tributaries project, which is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps made this film to highlight their role in shaping the river according to Congress' wishes. Ignore the soaring triumphant tone and just look at what the workers are doing to the river. This is how we changed the Mississippi forever.

Levees. A levee is a large earthen embankment that is used to contain the Mississippi River. They are largely just mounds of dirt covered in sod. The Mississippi has 3,500 miles of levees running its banks averaging almost 25 feet in height. There's nothing complicated about a levee. The main difficulty, really, is getting enough dirt to build these huge artificial hills. When a hole breaks in a levee, it's called a crevasse. Some get famous enough to have names.

Weirs. A weir is like a dam that is designed to be topped. That is to say, it's a structure that's built under the surface of the river's water to change the flow characteristics of the water. Bendway weirs are a popular concept for reducing the erosion and meandering problems noted above. Weirs angled upstream appear to cut down on the amount of erosion on the outer bank of the river by minimizing the secondary currents of the river spinning outward. Over 190 bendway weirs have been built in the Mississippi since 1989.

Dredging. Since 1930, the Army Corps of Engineers has been tasked with dredging the river to maintain a nine-foot deep navigation channel. That action takes place upriver using a boat operated by the Corps' St. Paul district called The Goetz Dredge. "Under optimum conditions, the dredge can pump as much as 1,300 cubic yards per hour as far as 1,650 feet and up to 800 feet inland," the Corps says. "Booster pumps are sometimes used in combination with the Goetz to pump material up to approximately 10,000 feet."

Revetments. Revetments are a way of strengthening the outer bank of a river to keep it from eroding. Over 360 miles of the river in the New Orleans district alone have been revetted. A popular kind of revetment on the Mississippi is basically a massive " concrete mat." In the video above, you can see one being built. In essence, thin concrete blocks held together by metal are created on land, loaded onto a ship, and dropped into the river.

The Old River Control Structure. The Mississippi really wants to flow down a different path than the one that it currently does. Rather than its current route, gravity is driving it to move down the Atchafalaya river bed to the Gulf of Mexico. Humans, having built cities and businesses with the current configuration, don't want this to happen. This is the main narrative of McPhee's outstanding New Yorker story. In essence, we block the river's natural path and divert the water into the Mississippi. That occurs at a former Mississippi tributary called Old River. "Rabalais gestured across the lock toward what seemed to be a pair of placid lakes separated by a trapezoidal earth dam a hundred feet high," McPhee writes. "It weighed five million tons, and it had stopped Old River. It had cut Old River in two. The severed ends were sitting there filling up with weeds. Where the Atchafalaya had entrapped the Mississippi, bigmouth bass were now in charge. The navigation lock had been dug beside this monument. The big dam, like the lock, was fitted into the mainline levee of the Mississippi. In Rabalais's pickup, we drove on the top of the dam, and drifted as wed through Old River country. On this day, he said, the water on the Mississippi side was eighteen feet above sea level, while the water on the Atchafalaya side was five feet above sea level." If the structure that keeps the Mississippi from becoming the Atchafalaya fails, it would be one of the largest catastrophes in American history.

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What We've Done to the Mississippi River: An Explainer

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John McPhee locates the beginning of the problem with the Mississippi way back at the founding of New Orleans. By 1724, a decree to build levees had already been promulgated. Things have only gotten worse since then. By 1812, there were already hundreds of miles of levee along the west bank.

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Revetments are a way of strengthening the outer bank of a river to keep it from eroding. Over 360 miles of the river in the New Orleans district alone have been revetted. A popular kind of revetment on the Mississippi is basically a massive "concrete mat." In the video above, you can see one being built. In essence, thin concrete blocks held together by metal are created on land, loaded onto a ship, and dropped into the river.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What Humans Have Done

John McPhee locates the beginning of the problem with the Mississippi way back at the founding of New Orleans. By 1724, a decree to build levees had already been promulgated. Things have only gotten worse since then. By 1812, there were already hundreds of miles of levee along the west bank. By the time of the great 1927 flood, there were 1500 miles of levees, and that was only the beginning. It was the Flood Control Act of 1928 and various addenda that would create and refine the Mississippi River and Tributaries project, which is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps made this film to highlight their role in shaping the river according to Congress' wishes. Ignore the soaring triumphant tone and just look at what the workers are doing to the river. This is how we changed the Mississippi forever.

Levees. A levee is a large earthen embankment that is used to contain the Mississippi River. They are largely just mounds of dirt covered in sod. The Mississippi has 3,500 miles of levees running its banks averaging almost 25 feet in height. There's nothing complicated about a levee. The main difficulty, really, is getting enough dirt to build these huge artificial hills. When a hole breaks in a levee, it's called a crevasse. Some get famous enough to have names.

Weirs. A weir is like a dam that is designed to be topped. That is to say, it's a structure that's built under the surface of the river's water to change the flow characteristics of the water. Bendway weirs are a popular concept for reducing the erosion and meandering problems noted above. Weirs angled upstream appear to cut down on the amount of erosion on the outer bank of the river by minimizing the secondary currents of the river spinning outward. Over 190 bendway weirs have been built in the Mississippi since 1989.

Dredging. Since 1930, the Army Corps of Engineers has been tasked with dredging the river to maintain a nine-foot deep navigation channel. That action takes place upriver using a boat operated by the Corps' St. Paul district called The Goetz Dredge. "Under optimum conditions, the dredge can pump as much as 1,300 cubic yards per hour as far as 1,650 feet and up to 800 feet inland," the Corps says. "Booster pumps are sometimes used in combination with the Goetz to pump material up to approximately 10,000 feet."

Revetments. Revetments are a way of strengthening the outer bank of a river to keep it from eroding. Over 360 miles of the river in the New Orleans district alone have been revetted. A popular kind of revetment on the Mississippi is basically a massive " concrete mat." In the video above, you can see one being built. In essence, thin concrete blocks held together by metal are created on land, loaded onto a ship, and dropped into the river.

The Old River Control Structure. The Mississippi really wants to flow down a different path than the one that it currently does. Rather than its current route, gravity is driving it to move down the Atchafalaya river bed to the Gulf of Mexico. Humans, having built cities and businesses with the current configuration, don't want this to happen. This is the main narrative of McPhee's outstanding New Yorker story. In essence, we block the river's natural path and divert the water into the Mississippi. That occurs at a former Mississippi tributary called Old River. "Rabalais gestured across the lock toward what seemed to be a pair of placid lakes separated by a trapezoidal earth dam a hundred feet high," McPhee writes. "It weighed five million tons, and it had stopped Old River. It had cut Old River in two. The severed ends were sitting there filling up with weeds. Where the Atchafalaya had entrapped the Mississippi, bigmouth bass were now in charge. The navigation lock had been dug beside this monument. The big dam, like the lock, was fitted into the mainline levee of the Mississippi. In Rabalais's pickup, we drove on the top of the dam, and drifted as wed through Old River country. On this day, he said, the water on the Mississippi side was eighteen feet above sea level, while the water on the Atchafalaya side was five feet above sea level." If the structure that keeps the Mississippi from becoming the Atchafalaya fails, it would be one of the largest catastrophes in American history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What We've Done to the Mississippi River: An Explainer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
John McPhee locates the beginning of the problem with the Mississippi way back at the founding of New Orleans. By 1724, a decree to build levees had already been promulgated. Things have only gotten worse since then. By 1812, there were already hundreds of miles of levee along the west bank.

# data[].attributes.body
The Mississippi really wants to flow down a different path than the one that it currently does. Rather than its current route, gravity is driving it to move down the Atchafalaya river bed to the Gulf of Mexico. Humans, having built cities and businesses with the current configuration, don't want this to happen. This is the main narrative of McPhee's outstanding New Yorker story. In essence, we block the river's natural path and divert the water into the Mississippi. That occurs at a former Mississippi tributary called Old River. "Rabalais gestured across the lock toward what seemed to be a pair of placid lakes separated by a trapezoidal earth dam a hundred feet high," McPhee writes. "It weighed five million tons, and it had stopped Old River. It had cut Old River in two. The severed ends were sitting there filling up with weeds. Where the Atchafalaya had entrapped the Mississippi, bigmouth bass were now in charge. The navigation lock had been dug beside this monument. The big dam, like the lock, was fitted into the mainline levee of the Mississippi. In Rabalais's pickup, we drove on the top of the dam, and drifted as wed through Old River country. On this day, he said, the water on the Mississippi side was eighteen feet above sea level, while the water on the Atchafalaya side was five feet above sea level." If the structure that keeps the Mississippi from becoming the Atchafalaya fails, it would be one of the largest catastrophes in American history.