This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

THE WHISKEY KEG AND THE STATE BOUNDARY LINE
Paul Estronza La Violette (laviolette@datasync.com)
Hancock County has many strange tales wrapped in the twisting path of its history. One of the most unusual of these is the one about the part a whiskey keg played in the Mississippi / Louisiana boundary line.
There are a number of variations of the story, but any telling entails knowing the geography of the general area near the mouth of The Rigoletes and where the two state boundary sits (see map). Most state boundaries that involve water are located in the water midway between the two states. The Mississippi and Louisiana boundary in this area does not, actually hugging the Mississippi Coast, and in fact passing inside a low, marshy coastal island called sometimes Grand Island and sometimes Half Moon Island.
Seem a little fishy? Well, there lies the heart of the often told story.
In the bare bones telling, it seems that sometime in the 1800’s an ad hoc Mississippi / Louisiana committee was formed to decide on a boundary line in the water between the two states. In the most popular versions of the story, the Louisianans played host, entertaining the Mississippians with good food and lots of whiskey.
On the second day, when someone mentioned that they should get down to deciding the boundary, a Louisianan delegate casually pointed to a whiskey keg that stood nearby.
“Now I noticed, gentlemen, that there keg is about empty. Since it ain’t doing us no good sitting there, I humbly suggest we put it in the water and let it drift when the tide turns. I move that we tag along behind it and use its drift to set up the dividing line. Being that we have both drank from it, the keg should be completely impartial. Shouldn’t take too long and we’ll be back this evening to eat some of that roast pig.”
This seemed fair to the Mississippi delegates who presumably checked to make sure that the keg was indeed empty and, helped by what were probably more sober Louisianans, boarded the boats. The rest is history and supposedly the line they established that day is the line we see today on the map.
Also, to add a fascicule of truth to the story as well as indicate that what happened may well have been a con job, are a few facts about the tidal currents in the area, facts that the local Louisiana host would know, but that the Mississippi visitors would not.
This is, that the west-setting tidal current holds back the Lake Pontchartrain water trying to exit through The Rigoletes. However, when that tide shifts and becomes east-setting, the Lake Pontchartrain waters that had been pent up by the previous tide are released and a strong current flows out of the Rigoletes that turns east and hugs the Mississippi coast.