St. Patrick's Catholic Church — West Pointe à la Hache

On the west bank of the Mississippi, 45 miles south of New Orleans, a small Catholic church sits on Woodland Plantation's grounds — not where it was built, but where it had to go. St. Patrick's was moved here in 1998 for preservation, relocated from elsewhere in West Pointe à la Hache after decades of hurricane risk finally demanded a choice.

The landscape explains the move. Plaquemines Parish straddles both banks of the river with no bridge connecting them — only the Pointe à la Hache Ferry, the furthest downriver vehicle crossing on the Mississippi. West Pointe à la Hache sits opposite the parish seat, reachable historically only by water, and the delta marshland has always been subject to seasonal hurricane damage. In 1915, a hurricane breached levees and killed thirty-one people in Pointe à la Hache across the river. Katrina hit in 2005. Tropical Storm Lee followed in 2011. Isaac flooded West Pointe à la Hache in 2012. The church was moved before the worst of it, but the pattern was already clear.

Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, St. Patrick's shares fifty acres with Woodland Plantation's Southern Comfort bottle house. The building survived by leaving. That's the delta's bargain — what endures does so because someone moved it to higher ground while there was still time.