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LSU Students Come Together for Atchafalaya Trace Project
LSU students representing four countries and eight different fields of
study recently unveiled their plan to promote tourism in the 13 parishes
that make up the Atchafalaya Trace and to earn the area recognition from
the federal government as a National Heritage Area.
As an added element, according to the students’ plan, the designation
would create “additional interest in the area, improvements to local
economies, increases in homesteading, and national respect.”
Historically, Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin has acted as a natural,
and now artificial, floodplain of the Atchafalaya and Mississippi Rivers.
With a total of 595,000 acres, it is the nation’s largest swamp
wilderness, containing nationally significant expanses of bottomland hardwoods
of cypress and tupelo, swamplands, endangered animal species, vast recreational
opportunities, and culturally historical peoples.
In September 2001, the Atchafalaya
Trace Commission, in conjunction with the LSU
College of Art & Design and the School
of Landscape Architecture, agreed to work on an inventory and analysis
report surveying the 13-parish Atchafalaya Trace Area. What would have
normally taken planners and designers three years to formulate, LSU students
were able to accomplish in only four months through intensive team work.
Last updated September 2002
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The
Atchafalaya Spillway
