Thus started a series of stream channelizations, dammings, and levee placements. Landowners succeeded in draining sizeable cleared areas by speeding runoffs to tributary streams as early as the 1850s. Other major alterations occurred in the 20th century under the auspices of the Cache Creek Drainage District including construction of the Post Creek Cutoff in 1915, a ditch that diverted water from the Cache River to the Ohio River some 55 miles from the real mouth of the Cache. Then in 1950, the original mouth of the Cache was bypassed by a shortcut ditch that emptied the lower Cache directly into the Mississippi, reducing the river by some 20 miles. But the changes in the lower Cache River were nevertheless extraordinary.
River flows can now be in either direction, depending on water levels.
Runoff from uplands that once took days to reach the lowlands now arrive in hours. The faster moving water brought with it phenomenal amounts of silt. Sedimentation was as much as 12 inches in a year. Trees were being undercut by bank erosion and others were smothered by water pushed up by rising silt layers, thereby also reducing water-holding capacities of the wetlands. Estimates are that only one thousandth of the remaining swamp could be considered to be undisturbed since presettlement days.