Mile 366.0 LBD — Remnants of Cypress Forest

In low and medium water levels, the stumps of giant cypress trees can be seen at the base of the bluffs along the left bank descending and are the remnants of the forests found here that stalled the opening of the Giles Cut-Off (1933). 

Lake Concordia in Louisiana was an ancient bed of the Lower Mississippi. The newer bend in front of it was called Marengo Bend, and just above was Giles Bend.

In Marengo Bend, the river followed its usual pattern and the neck where Giles plantation was located became extremely narrow. Water flowed across Giles Neck in the floods of 1907, 1922, and 1927, and it became obvious that the river would soon abandon Marengo Bend. In 1933, the Army Corps of Engineers attempted to forestall the river's action by constructing an artificial cutoff that would bring the channel into better alignment than the river would achieve if left to its own devices.

Giles Cutoff was very slow to develop, and during the next low water period the engineers discovered why. Ancient cypress trees were embedded in the hard blue mud at the bottom of the artificial cut, and they were forming an effective obstruction to the low water flow. After several years of intermittent dredging, the natural dam was finally removed, and the river accepted the Giles Cutoff as its new bed.

Lake Concordia, a bed abandoned by the Mississippi centuries ago, may have been the last resting place of the Spanish explorer, Hernando DeSoto, who died of fever and exhaustion somewhere along the banks of the river in 1542.

(Marion Bragg: Historic Names & Places)