ABSTRACT
The flooding caused by high waters overtopping the natural levee in spring and by water surging through crevasses quickly convinced French colonials in New Orleans that the natural levee alone provided insufficient protection from the Mississippi. Throughout the French colonial era, "extension of the levee line was almost entirely the work of private land developers supervised at the local level, first by commandants, then by parish and county governments." By 1752, the berms spanned 20 miles below the city to 30 miles upriver and advanced in that direction by about one mile per year. The tradition of localism continued under the Spanish, as each concession recipient bore the responsibility of levee construction, drainage ditch excavation, and road clearing. An early attempt at centralized levee oversight came with Spanish governor Carondelet's levee ordinance of 1792, which required syndicated residents to raise levees to the recent high-water mark of the river and reinforce their sides by filling in ditches and planting grass.
