Hymelia Crevasse 131.5 RBD

The crevasse at Hymelia plantation occurred on March 26, 1903, and was the most disastrous break in the levees in that major flood year. The levee at Hymelia had been considered perfectly safe, and it was with real astonishment that an observer reported discovering a hole ten feet in diameter at the base of the earthen embankment. The hole enlarged very rapidly, the top of the levee collapsed, and within three hours the break was over 200 feet wide. For the next few days, desperate and costly efforts were made to close the Hymelia Crevasse. More than 1,000 laborers were put to work constructing pile and wood cribbing, and a sandbag fill. They were making good progress when a barge crashed into the cribbing on April 7 and wrecked it. The workers tried frantically to repair the damaged section, but their task was hopeless. Early in May the work was suspended, after the expenditure of a vast amount of money, materials, and labor to no purpose. The water that poured through Hymelia Crevasse inundated plantations and villages below, but the long effort to save the levee had given the people time to evacuate their homes before the flood waters reached them. Some plantation owners were able to construct emergency levees to protect them from the water. During the flood of 1912, there was a similar emergency at Hymelia. The levee collapsed on March 13, 1912, at eight o'clock in the morning, and the local levee board rushed laborers and materials to the area and began to try to close the crevasse. Local interests soon came to the end of their limited resources, and for a time it appeared that the flood waters would flow unimpeded over the plantations and towns below Hymelia. Fortunately, the Mississippi River Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers stepped in to assist the hard-pressed flood fighters, and undertook the responsibility for closing the crevasse. Damages had been estimated at $25 million in 1903. In 1912 they were much less, for the crevasse was success- fully closed. (Braggs)

131 RBD Hymelia Beach

A long bank with low angle sandy beaches makes possible landings for camps or picnics in low water 0-10NO below Bonnet Carre Island right bank descending, the best of which are found below an inlet leading through the woods to an isolated lake, the remnants of a past channel of the big river. As with Bonnet Carre Island, paddlers here are protected from the levee by a wetlands behind the beach, although there is a 4WD road in the woods makes for possible land visitation.