Mile 534.0 - Vaucluse Landing

John Ruskey

20 Apr 2026 � 1 min read

534 Vaucluse Landing

The top end of Chicot Lake, the largest oxbow lake in North America, is found just through the woods and over the levee from Vaucluse Landing. In the geologic history of a meandering waterway, a free-flowing river periodically cuts off its own bends and isolates them in half-round lakes known as oxbows. Vaucluse Landing is the site of one of these ancient cutoffs. Today the river slams strongly against the banks here before being funneled downstream under the bridge.

From Marion Bragg’s Historic Names & Places:

During major floods, Vaucluse Landing is one of the places that engineers and flood fighters watch with some apprehension. Large sandboils have often erupted in the area in the past, and sandboils have to be controlled or they can cause a levee to collapse.

A sandboil is created when flood water seeps under the base of a levee through sand in the levee foundation. If the pressure of the seep water is high enough, the sand within the levee foundation can be eroded out, causing the overlying levee to collapse. Boils occur all along the levee system in major floods. They are usually brought under control by ringing them with sandbags, to a height that equalizes the pressure and reduces the flow of water through them.

There was a large sandboil at Vaucluse in 1922, and in the flood of 1929 a sandboil in the same area built up a crater of sand that was about 15 feet wide across the top. It was brought under control, and the levee held. In the flood of 1973, there were boils in the Vaucluse area again, but again they were brought under control.

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