Head of Passes/Pilottown, Louisiana

Head of Passes/Pilottown, Louisiana. Mississippi River Walk. , A) Head of Passes , Mile 0.0 AHP, The Mississippi River officially ends here, 954 miles from Cairo, Illinois. At this point, the stream divides into three channels, Pass a Louture, South Pass, and Southern Pass. They each branch into smaller passes and all eventually empty into the Gulf of Mexico. Early French navigators favored the Southeast Pass off Pass a Louture, and France fortified an outpost named Baliz on its banks. The first U.S. Civil War battle was fought at the Head of Passes in 1861. It was one of the few Confederate naval victories of the war. The Passes were a constant problem for the growing port of New Orleans in the 1800’s. At high water, a passage was easy, but at low water heavy ships often could not find an open channel between the river and sea. In 1875, the U. S. Congress contracted with the pioneering river engineer, Captain James B. Eads to open a reliable channel to the sea. (Eads had completed building the giant bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis the previous year.) Congress drove a hard bargain with Eads: if he failed they paid him nothing; if he succeeded they would pay him eight million dollars. Eads built a system of jetties on the South Pass, and within four years the river had dug itself a 30-foot-deep channel to the sea. Early in 1900’s, a similar jetty system created a 40-foot channel in the Southwest Pass, and it has become the major route for ocean-going vessels., B) Pilottown, Louisiana , Mile 2.0 AHP, Pilottown is the interchange point for bar pilots and river pilots on the ocean-going vessels that navigate the Mississippi. Bar pilots meet ships at sea and guide them through the passes and up to Pilottown. River pilots take over for the journey to ports on the Mississippi River. The process is reversed on outgoing trips.