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Vicksburg/Loess

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published May 29, 2018 at 11:45 AM EDT

The Civil War citadel of Vicksburg fell on July 4, 1863. On that day, Confedearte regiments marched out one at a time and stacked their arms. Of that occasion, General Grant's telegraph operator, Samuel Beckwith wrote, "The trampling of myriads of feet had stirred up a fine, yellow clay dust that coated our garments and filled our eyes and ears and nostrils until it was almost unberable." Like the union soldiers, this dust had origins far to the north of the Vicksburg hills.

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Kelby Ouchley

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.

See stories by Kelby Ouchley