Word: topsoil
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...river is the color of cafe au lait, with a generous helping of 30-weight and detergent thrown in. Down toward the mouth of the Mississippi, the land was formed of sedimentary deposits from farther upriver, rich topsoil blown from the hills of Wyoming into the Missouri, acres of Kansas prairie swallowed by flooding and swept downstream. Mark Twain's characters claimed that a man who drank the water could grow corn in his stomach. You know all this, and yet you are unprepared for the Delta, otherworldly and flat, the best place to grow cotton on this earth, once...
Until just a few decades ago, land was winning. By the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the Gulf had retreated some 60 miles (100 km) south of New Orleans. The Mississippi's immense burden of flaked-off topsoil (originating mainly from its big western tributary, the Missouri) overmatched the rising Gulf. The unrestrained river episodically changed course, laying new land from Biloxi to Houston. Over 7,000 years, the Mississippi River created a new piece of continent the size of New Jersey...