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The Great Flood of 1927 can be traced back to the previous summer, as rainstorms in the Midwest swelled streams that flowed into the Mississippi River, followed by record rainfall throughout the Mississippi River Valley that fall. 

In earlier eras, the great river’s tributaries would have overflowed into natural drainage areas. But levees constructed during the late 1800s were not high or strong enough to contain the deluge. 

On Good Friday, April 15, 1927, New Orleans got more than 14 inches of rain, which disabled its pumps and added more water to the Mississippi River as it rushed past the city. 

Business leaders urged Gov. O.H. Simpson to destroy part of the levee downstream from New Orleans to spare the city, which the governor and his advisors agreed to do despite protests from downstream residents. On April 29, engineers started blowing apart the levee at Caernarvon in St. Bernard Parish.

Few victims of the deliberate levee destruction were fully compensated, and many received nothing. As it turned out, the blast hadn’t even been necessary, as a natural breach eased pressure on New Orleans’ levees.

Two levee breaches in May caused disastrous flooding in Avoyelles Parish. The town of Arnaudville, near the St. Landry–St. Martin Parish line, flooded on May 19, while Breaux Bridge and St. Martinville flooded two days later, followed by New Iberia, Jeanerette, Franklin and Morgan City. 

Thousands of cattle drowned and farm crops were wiped out as much of South Louisiana turned into a lake 200 miles long and 50 to 100 miles wide. The Red Cross and local relief committees housed and fed refugees in camps set up in towns that did not flood. Lafayette alone housed 20,000 people on the campus of Southwestern Louisiana Institute, now UL-Lafayette. 

Residents well outside the flood zone were able to experience the disaster almost in real time thanks to the new medium of radio. The coverage played into Northern stereotypes of the distressed South, which was seen as hopelessly backward and outmoded. 

The Great Flood ultimately inundated 26,000 square miles in seven states, forced nearly a million people from their homes and caused more than $400 million in losses. In Louisiana, about 10,000 square miles in 20 parishes were flooded.

Editor’s note: Sources consulted for this story include The Daily Advertiser, Smithsonian Magazine, UL-Lafayette and 64 Parishes.

This piece first ran in the May 23, 2024 edition of LaPolitics Weekly. Wish you could have read it then? Subscribe today!

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