Geographical Features
The Atchafalaya Basin, the surrounding plain of the river, is filled with bayous, bald cypress swamps, and marshes that give way to more brackish estuarine conditions and end in the Spartina grass marshes, near and at where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. It includes the Lower Atchafalaya River, Wax Lake Outlet, Atchafalaya Bay, and the Atchafalaya River and Bayous Chene, Boeuf, and Black navigation channel. See maps and photo views of the Atchafalaya Deltas centered on 29°26′30″N 91°25′00″W / 29.44167°N 91.4166667°W / 29.44167; -91.4166667.
The basin, which is susceptible to heavy flooding, is sparsely inhabited. The basin is about 20 miles (32 km) in width from east to west and 150 miles (240 km) in length. With 595,000 acres (2,410 km2), it is the nation’s largest swamp wilderness, containing nationally significant expanses of bottomland hardwoods, swamplands, bayous, and back-water lakes. The Basin's thousands of acres of forest and farmland are home to the Louisiana black bear (Ursus americanus luteolus), which has been on the United States Fish and Wildlife Service threatened list since 1992.
The few roads that cross it follow the tops of levees. Interstate 10 crosses the basin on elevated pillars on a continuous 18.2 mile (29,290 m) bridge from Grosse Tete, Louisiana, to Henderson, Louisiana, near at the Whiskey River Pilot Channel at 30°21′50″N 91°38′00″W / 30.36389°N 91.6333333°W / 30.36389; -91.6333333.
The Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1984 to improve plant communities for endangered and declining species of wildlife, waterfowl, and migratory birds.
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