8 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES 
rare.© Although in latitude 30°, and with a warm climate for much 
of the year, the mean annual temperature is only 69.3°, with rather 
small seasonal range from 54° in January to 82.4° in July. 
New Orleans has become a great commercial center, as much of 
the vast foreign commerce of the Mississippi Valley and central 
United States passes through its portals. It is reached annually by 
about 1,000 vessels whose capacity in 1928 amounted to 11,204,573 
tons, according to the New Orleans Association of Commerce, It is 
a port of entry for a large part of our business with Latin-American 
ports. It claims to be the largest market in the United States for 
cotton, bananas, rice, and burlap and one of the largest for sugar, 
mahogany, coffee, furs, hides, and naval stores. According to state- 
ments furnished by the New Orleans Association of Commerce, 
from 350,000,000 to 450,000,000 pounds of coffee, 500,000 bales of 
cotton, and 23,000,000 bunches of bananas are handled every year. 
The grain elevators have a capacity of 2,622,000 bushels. The 
imports in 1928 amounted to $208,430,587 and the exports to 
$384,597,092, all transported on the Mississippi River through the 
great passes at its mouth. This river at New Orleans is 2,000 feet 
wide and in places 200 feet deep. Although there is provision for 
many vessels on the city’s long water front, additional space to ac- 
commodate the heavy traffic has been obtained by the construction 
of a canal 30 feet deep and 5 miles long, connecting the river with 
Lake Pontchartrain. This canal has a huge lock to provide for the 
drop from river to Gulf level and cost $21,000,000. 
In order to permit the access of large ocean-going vessels to New 
Orleans, two of the outlet channels, South Pass and Southwest Pass, 
at the mouth of the Mississippi River, originally having only 10 or 
12 feet of water, have been dredged to depths of 30 to 35 feet, with 
widths of 750 to 1,000 feet. The filling of these channels by the great 
volume of silt carried by the river is prevented by a current of sea 
water which passes under the fresh-water outflow, forming a deep- 
seated eddy which keeps the sediment in suspension and carries it off, 
Great care, however, has to be taken to prevent the river from 
creating new passes, which would decrease the strength of the current 
in the main channel and diminish its effectiveness in transporting 
sediment, 
New Orleans is also a great manufacturing center, the 1929 output 
of its 786 factories being valued at $148,388,315, according to the 
United States Census. Its manufacturing industries have the great 
advantage of natural gas from the Monroe field, in Louisiana, cheap 
$In the summers of 1853 to 1855 | present water supply has been estab- 
there were 37,000 deaths from yellow | lished the death rate from typhoid fever 
fever, at times at the rate of 300 a day. | is only 2 per 100,000. (Data from New 
In 1889 the death rate f: laria was | Orleans Association of Commerce.) 
156 per 100,000; now it is 1. Since the 
