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The raft blocked the mouth of Twelve Mile Bayou, impeding settlement in the area west of Shreveport. There were many smaller logjams on the Red River. [2] The raft raised the banks of the river, creating bayous and several lakes. Called the Great Raft Lakes, these included Caddo and Cross Lakes, along the lower reaches of the Red River's ...
As a result of the success of his design, Shreve was ordered in 1832 by Secretary of War Lewis Cass to clear the Great Raft, 150 miles (240 km) of dead wood on the Red River. [2] Shreve successfully removed the Raft by 1839. [1] [2] [26] The area of the Red River where the Raft was most concentrated is today his namesake city of Shreveport. [1] [6]
The most famous natural wood raft is the Great Raft on the Red River in Louisiana, which prior to its removal in the 1830s affected between 390 and 480 km (240–300 mi) of the main channel. [3] It has been suggested that such extensive log rafts may have been common in Europe in prehistory. [4]
Until 1839, the Red River was not navigable from just north of Natchitoches to what is now Shreveport, due to the Great Raft, a natural logjam which had prevented river traffic since the beginning of American exploration of the Louisiana Territory. The Bradleys found a route northward, making it to the place now known as Bradley, Arkansas
In 1825 the Arkansas legislature petitioned the United States Congress to remove the Great Raft, as the logjam was called, so that boats could ply the Red River as far west as the mouth of the Kiamichi and the newly established Fort Towson. Within several years, the Army Corps of Engineers had done so. [10]
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The Red River Raft (or Great Raft) acted as a dam on the river and raised the level of Caddo Lake and the Red River several feet. This rise of Caddo Lake and the corresponding rise in the Big Cypress Bayou at Jefferson permitted commercial riverboat travel to Jefferson from ports such as St. Louis and New Orleans via the Mississippi and Red Rivers.
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