mississippi river changes course, you live in louisiana, you are now on the miss. side of the river?

Question

i was looking at a map of LA and MS. parts of MS are on the LA side and vice versa. big parcels of land, appears to be at least10 areas of 10+sq miles some as big as 30 sq miles. i am sure that the river changed course and isolated them. i am also sure that it is the same thing for Arkansas, missouri all the way up. evidently the state lines were established before the river changed course.

the question is do the cut off LA residents still pay LA state property taxes?, do they have to get car tags in LA? do they send their children to school in LA?

there are only 2 bridges across river between MS and LA. it would be a very long drive back to county seat.

how do people deal with these situations?

i just used MS and LA as examples. the question is not limited to just those two states.

Answer 1

The Supreme Court has dealt with this issue from time to time, and as I recall, they've had mixed results. Some state boundaries are in rivers, usually at mid-channel. And rivers do change course. There have been lawsuits; sometimes the Court said the boundary changed, and other times it said the boundaries did not change. In the latter case, the Court looks at the history and local custom, and said they'll leave things alone. Recently, the Court seems to encourage the affected states to work it out themselves, perhaps by doing a land swap.

Not too long ago I read of an oxbow along one of the boundary rivers -- Louisiana/Mississippi? Mississippi/Tennessee? -- where a community became isolated, a bridge got washed out, the ferry stopped running, and the people had to go fifty miles or so to get to their own state.

Another famous place like that is Port Roberts (or Point Roberts??). Washington. The 49th parallel dividing the U.S. from Canada runs through there, but Port Roberts is on the Canadian side of the Juan de Fuca Strait. That means the only way in & out of Port Roberts, Washington, is through Canada.

Answer 2

They bite the bullet, that's how. The Mississippi changes course like most other rivers. We can't keep re-drawing the state lines every time it happens even though it might seem easier to do so. If you're interested, look up Kaskaskia, Illinois.

Answer 3

Look at Calhoun county in Illinois and see how we hadle it. there are no bridges across the mississippi and only 1 across the illinois. we use ferries all the time

Answer 4

*Chuckles* Since when did the government ever care about the people?