Coastal Mississippi

Remember hearing about Katrina and all the news reports about New Orleans, its people and the dikes?  Do you remember hearing anything about Mississippi?  If I heard anything, it wasn’t enough to remember.  Coastal Mississippi was hammered! Nearly all the way to the Alabama border I saw signs of hurricane damage.

The area where I am staying is roughly 50 mile east of New Orleans and only about a quarter of the coastal houses have been rebuilt.  Houses off the coast, inland a half-mile or so are pretty much back on their lots.  Those houses are also much smaller and very few are set up off the ground.  Nearly all the rebuilt coastal houses are on posts, pillars or beams one and two stories above ground level.

I don’t think being two stories off the ground will help them if there is another Katrina.  First, the only houses that seemed to survive are cement or brick built and I saw few replacements that are built that solidly.  Second, water in Biloxi was 35ft high and the water was as damaging as the wind.  What difference does it make if the wind is strong enough to tear off the roof when the water pushed along by it is going to crash through your windows and flood your house?

It looks like 80% of the coastal property in my area is for sale.  Some of it has houses on it, some foundations or pillars and some are simply bare.  I talked to a woman who told me many of the residents in my area were retired and they simply couldn’t afford to rebuild.  She has a friend that lives inland.  The friend had no flood insurance since her area never expected to be flooded; in the past insurance agents didn’t even mention the idea.  That woman was flooded up to the middle of her second floor.

Since community infrastructures were also shredded some of them used storm repair as a means of rethinking and upgrading infrastructure.  Supply companies also made some changes.  It looks like power and phone lines are underground.  I see lots of streets dug up and bundles of pipe lying along side the diggings.  Roads are still being replaced along the shore in my area and it seems to be the last of shore repair.

The state park I’m staying in just reopened late last summer.  Only about ½ of its spaces are ready to be used and its swimming pool and water park is still closed.  The attendant I spoke with said they barely had 30 snowbirds over winter.

Most of the towns appear recovered.  Casinos have rebuilt, Wal-marts abound and the area is home to more Waffle Houses than McDs.  Small shops that depend on tourists are closed. Some smaller strip malls are boarded up and I saw an occasional abandoned school.

It is mile upon mile of empty house lots that have most impressed me.  Off shore lots are normal sized and normal priced I think (150x150 for $50,000) while the coastal lots are generally over an acre and sport Lake Superior prices.  Near Biloxi townhouse complexes have sprung up.  Those range from uninspired (think prefab) through garish (Italian baroque) with one or two tastefully done.

The beaches themselves are shiny white sand that is supposed to originate in the Appalachians.  Wherever it comes from the beaches are pretty.  There are scores of men keeping them picked up and groomed while others work at keeping drifting sand of the roadway.  There are strips of snow fence nailed to posts set into the sand.  The sand collects on both sides of the fencing and then more men plant sea grass to anchor the sand.  If the dunes are successful, eventually the beach will no longer be visible from the road.

Also generally not visible and still around are mosquitoes, midges and wood ticks.

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Poverty Point

My thwarted archeological self rose to the foreground last week when I visited a place called, you guessed it, Poverty Point.  The name comes from a former plantation however an ex-plantation was not the draw.  Poverty Point is the site of ancient civilization.  By ancient I mean around 10,000 BC.  And still, a couple of stray Clovis points were not the draw.

So, why am I taken with the place, some of you may ask with a sigh of resignation?  Around 1500 BC there was a largely idle well-fed population of about 2000 people living at the Point.  I know there was much potential idleness or maybe lots of slaves even then because somebody carried 100,000s of baskets of dirt to build a series of half-circle mounds and also an enormous bird.  They leveled about 40 acres and then ‘painted’ it by hauling in differently colored dirt.
I’m not exaggerating; the archeologists who have studied the place figured it took at least 1 ½ million 40-pound baskets of dirt to build the earthworks.  That’s enough dirt to build the Great Pyramid of Egypt.  And after all the studying they still don’t know why they were built.

This is all delta land and before that was shallow sea so there aren’t what upper midwesterners would call rocks, a few pebbles maybe however no rocks.  Keep in mind the point has been farmed for 100 years.  Those farmers just plowed right over the smaller mounds and the central plaza (about as long as 3 football fields).  Even after all the farming, over 40 tons of stone have been found.  That stone is not native, its been carted in from as far north as the Great Lakes, east from the Appalachians and from northern Florida.  Most of it has been worked into useful stuff like bowls, net and throwing-stick weights or jewelry.  And after all the studying they still have no idea what the people who lived here used for trade goods.

I could bore you even more with other intriguing detail however I choose not to share.