The Red River, one of the waterways linked to the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, is 1,360 miles long and begins in Texas and Oklahoma, carrying reddish-orange sediment southeast through northern Louisiana. Its color comes from rust-colored soils of sandstone, siltstone, and shale in older Permian red beds near its origins, and these sediments appear in the water, sandbars, river banks, and alluvial farmlands of the floodplain. Long ago, as the Red flowed toward a large Mississippi meander later called Turnbull’s Bend, that meander intercepted the river and made it a tributary, while the Atchafalaya also eventually connected with the meander as a distributary. In the mid-1800s, a cut through the narrow neck of Turnbull’s Bend improved navigation on the Mississippi; afterward the upper channel gradually silted in and separated from the Mississippi, while the lower channel, Old River, became an important connection among the three rivers. Today levees, outlets, locks, and dams support river transportation, bank stabilization, and recreation in the region. On the Red River 11 miles upstream from Marksville, Lock and Dam #1, also called the Lindy C. Boggs Lock and Dam, is the first of five locks used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to manage transportation from Shreveport to the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers. Without these controls and the constant work of numerous engineers and agencies, water transportation on the Red River in central Louisiana would not be practical or productive. Severe floods in 1948 and 2015 also underscore the power of water in this dynamic river environment, and although the locks were not designed for flood control, management through the system can affect water levels near the river and below this lock.