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Vicksburg, Mississippi (CNN) -- The flood-swollen Mississippi River held at historic levels at Vicksburg early Thursday -- a status it's not expected to relinquish for days.
Hitting its expected peak of 57.1 feet hours ahead of the original forecast, the National Weather Service predicts the crest will hold through at least Saturday morning.
"Residents who live along the river need to keep an eye out and be vigilant," said Marty Pope, a senior hydrologist with the weather service's Jackson, Mississippi office. "We're not going to fall to the kind of levels we got to during the large 2008 flood until early June, and won't fall below flood stage until mid-to-late June."
The river, initially forecast to crest at Vicksburg Thursday morning, began cresting ahead of schedule Wednesday night probably because an old levee system in Greenville, Mississippi, was breached last Friday and spread the flood's flow, Pope said.
The Mississippi is more than 14 feet above flood stage at Vicksburg and more than a foot over the record set in the city in 1927.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was keeping a watchful eye on the Yazoo Backwater Levee, which residents near Vicksburg were counting on for protection. It is designed to keep water from backing into the Yazoo River delta.
The backwater levee was being "armored" by a heavy plastic coating to prevent it from washing out, said Charlie Tindall, attorney for the Board of Mississippi Levee Commissioners.
But the Yazoo River backwaters were already claiming territory and property. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was among residents who watched rising waters swallow their houses and lands Wednesday.
Barbour's spokeswoman confirmed that a house owned by the governor in his native Yazoo County was flooded by the watery onslaught moving southward.
The house is on a lake in central Mississippi near the backwater-flooded Yazoo River.
The high waters are pushing the county's wild hog population out of their normal habitat, drowning many of them.
"It's like these patches of ground, they are no more than three or four feet wide and they are looking for a dry place to lay," Randy Newell of Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks told CNN affiliate WAPT.
Wildlife officers have given farmers permission to kill the wild pigs who often will root up the areas designed to hold back the water.
Farther south, where the Mississippi River has not yet crested, residents were working to clear out their homes and find ways to get by.
"We're taking one on the chin -- not only for America but for Louisiana as well," said Guy Cormier, president of Louisiana's St. Martin Parish.
His parish is in part of the state expected to be flooded as authorities open sections of the Morganza Spillway to help spare other areas of Louisiana, including New Orleans.
"It's really hard when you go and visit with a family who own and operate everything they have in the area," Cormier said. "The decision has been made, and we're just going to have to battle it. But we're fighting people."
As of Wednesday evening, 17 bays were open at Morganza -- one more than earlier in the day -- moving water at an estimated 114,000 cubic feet per second, the Corps of Engineers said.
Mandatory evacuations will be in effect Saturday -- beginning at midnight Friday -- in Butte La Rose, Happy Town and the Sherburne Wildlife Management Area, the St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Office said.
By 8 a.m. Saturday, "the area will be secured and no one will be allowed to enter," the parish said in a news release.
Levees along the length of the river appeared to be holding, and water diverted through spillways seemed to be rising more slowly than expected, but Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned residents that plenty could go wrong.
"There's still an awful lot of water headed our way, and it's going to be here in many cases for weeks, not just a few days," Jindal said.
Officials said the spillway gates are likely to be open for weeks, and it will be weeks before the river falls below flood stage, allowing those who have evacuated to return safely.
The flood is the most significant to hit the lower Mississippi River valley since at least 1937. It has affected nine states so far: Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
In Krotz Springs, Louisiana, where floodwaters up to 10 feet deep are expected, some of the 400 residents plan to hold out until the last minute before evacuating.
"We will see it in the coming days," Maj. Jason Mahfouz of the Louisiana National Guard told CNN affiliate WBRZ. "That spillway structure will fill up and that's when the back-flow is expected in this area."
Stubbornly holding onto her property, Jeannette Ellis told the affiliate she'll stay behind a protective levee built by the guard as long as possible.