Headwaters of the Atchafalaya Traditional Cache

Welcome to the Atchafalaya Basin Geotrail, a series of twenty-four (24) geocaches that have been placed in and around the Atchafalaya Basin to highlight important features and to help tell the story about how water has influenced the region.  Although the story is about water, you don't need a boat to claim these geocaches! For more information please visit our related webpage above. 

The town of Simmesport is located at the northern boundary of the Atchafalaya Basin Floodway near the historic confluence of three rivers: the Mississippi River, the Red River, and the Atchafalaya River. The town lies within the West Atchfalaya Floodway and is protected by a ring levee. The West Atchfalaya Floodway was designed as a last-resort option to accept up to 250,000 cubic feet per second of flow during a “project design flood,” which is the “probable maximum flood” on the Mississippi River that the US Army Corps of Engineers designed the floodway system to accommodate. Flow into the West Atchfalaya Floodway would enter through a fuse plug levee that was designed to naturally erode when floodwaters begin to overtop it; however, some experts believe that dynamite may be required to open the fuse plug levee if the West Atchafalaya Floodway becomes necessary. Since the Atchafalaya Basin Floodway was constructed, the project design flood on the Mississippi River has not occurred, and the West Atchafalaya Floodway has never been used.