On November 20, 1980, a Texaco oil rig punctured a salt mine beneath Louisiana's Lake Peigneur. Within hours a whirlpool swallowed barges, a tugboat and the lake itself, and a canal reversed into a 150-foot waterfall.
The full account: how a misread drill location, a salt dome and an active mine combined to erase an 11-foot-deep lake in a single afternoon.
The story end to end: the drill, the growing whirlpool, the swallowed barges and the lake that refilled with saltwater.
A clear visual breakdown of the geology, from the oil rig and salt dome down to the mine galleries the lake poured into.
A vivid long-read on the miners' scramble to escape and the day Lake Peigneur drained straight into the earth.
A concise retrospective pinning down the date, the companies involved and the tens of millions paid out afterward.
Photos and aftermath: the Delcambre Canal flowing backward, the 150-foot waterfall and the deep saltwater lake left behind.
The geology that made it possible: salt domes, why we mine them for salt and oil, and why drilling near one over a mine is so risky.
The legacy: nine of eleven sunken barges later popped back up, and a chimney still marks the mine beneath the water.