Great Raft Remnant: O'Rourke Canal in Northwest Louisiana

The O'Rourke Canal sits just west of the Red River, and east of Ida, in northern Caddo Parish in this 1932 USGS topographical map. I centered on this portion because it's a remnant of the Great Raft. Here is the link to the full map: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/#10/32.5329/-93.1785

The Great Raft, a massive log jam along the Red River, present in the stream between Natchitoches and Arkansas, was cleared multiple times by multiple entities throughout the American period (post 1803). Local citizens and the state often funded small, local clearing projects. The first federally funded project was helmed by Captain Henry Shreve in 1837 between Natchitoches (Natchitoches Parish) and Bayou Pierre in today's Shreveport (Caddo Parish). The biggest federal project was led by Lt. Woodruff in 1873, conducted between Natchitoches and above Shreveport to the Arkansas border. In the 1880s, the Army Corps of Engineers cleared the raft above Shreveport again.

Before the raft clearings, men who worked the plantations built canals to bypass the logjams. Often, the planters whose land the canals crossed charged tolls for passage. After the Army Corps of Engineers cleared the raft, it had to build levees to keep water from diverting into the canals. Of course, not all canal-owners were happy with this; sometimes, they sabotaged the levees with dynamite. One of these canals was O'Rourke's. I haven't been able to find the full name of this canal-owner, but I did find out it was in use before the 1880s.

The O'Rourke Canal was wide enough that it diverted Red River waters, which is a bad thing; it could have cleaved all of the farm land between the streams as the two channels merged. Around 1900, the Corps of Engineers erected a levee between O'Rourke Canal (called O'Rourke Slough in correspondence) and the Red River. This 1932 map still identifies the old canal that steam ships used before the Red River was cleared of jams. Today, O'Rourke Canal (Slough) in northwestern Louisiana, a historical remnant of the Great Raft, is just a small ditch. If you drove by it, you wouldn't even think that this body of water once allowed steamers passage.

Today's view of O'Rourke Canal in northern Caddo Parish, Louisiana, courtesy Google Maps.