HISTORY50 - Mississippi River

There are three reasons why I chose this topic for a blog article.  First, the Mississippi River ties together a lot of the America history I’ve been writing about.  Second, there was much about the Mississippi that I didn’t know before starting this project.  And third, Pat and I are scheduled to take a steamboat cruise on the Mississippi River in the not-too-distant future.

 

I’ll start with an introduction to the Mississippi River and then discuss how the river formed and changed course over millions of years, including the Mississippi River Delta; then the first humans along the river; European exploration; colonization; the steamboat Era; the Civil War; selected 20^th and 21^st century events; navigation and flood control; ferries and bridges; and conclude with a snapshot of the Mississippi today, including environmental concerns.

My principal sources for this article include “Mississippi River” and “Mississippi River Delta,” Wikipedia; “Mississippi River Facts,” nps.gov; “The 70-Year-Old History of the Mississippi,” smithsonianmag.com; “Mississippi River,” newworldencyclopeia.org; “Mississippi River: A Cultural Treasure,” americanrivers.org; “Crossing water - Mississippi River ferry tales,” countryroadsmagazine.org; and numerous other online sources.

Introduction

The Mississippi River is one of the world’s major river systems in size, habitat diversity, and biological productivity.  It is also one of the world's most important commercial waterways and one of North America's great migration routes for both birds and fishes.

Here are a few facts about the Mississippi River:

The word “Mississippi” comes from Misi zipi, the French rendering of the Native American name for the river, Misi-ziibi (Great River).

 

The Mississippi River basin extends from the Rockies in the west to the Appalachians in the east.

The Mississippi River is the second longest river in North America, flowing 2,350 miles from its source at Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, generally south through the center of the continental United States to the Gulf of Mexico.  The Missouri River, a tributary of the Mississippi River, is about 100 miles longer.

The Mississippi River and its tributaries drain an area (watershed) of about 1.2 million square miles, including all or parts of 32 states and two Canadian provinces, about 41% of the continental United States.  This triangular Mississippi River watershed is the fourth largest in the world, extending from the Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west.  (The Amazon River watershed, for comparison, is about 2.7 million square miles).

The Mississippi forms the borders of eight states: Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi.  It runs through two others: Minnesota and Louisiana.  The river empties into the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles downstream from New Orleans, Louisiana.

At the river’s source, Lake Itasca, the river is between 20 and 30 feet wide, the narrowest stretch for its entire length.  The widest part of the Mississippi can be found at Lake Winnibigoshish, near Bena, Minnesota, where it is wider than 11 miles.

Leaving Lake Itasca, the average surface speed of the water is about 1.2 miles per hour - roughly one-half as fast as people walk.  At New Orleans, the river flows at about 3 miles per hour.  But the speed changes as water levels rise or fall and where the river widens, narrows, becomes shallower, or some combination of these factors.  It takes about three months for water that leaves Lake Itasca to reach the Gulf of Mexico.

Formation, Course Changes, and the Delta

Formation.  Around 80 million years ago, a mountain chain spanned the future path of the Mississippi River, blocking southbound water flows, so most North American rivers flowed to the Western Interior Sea or north to Canada’s Hudson Bay.  

Note:  The Western Interior Sea was a large inland sea that existed on the order of 100-43 million years ago, splitting the continent of North America into two landmasses.  The ancient sea stretched from the Gulf of Mexico and through the middle of the modern-day countries of the United States and Canada, meeting with the Arctic Ocean to the north.  At its largest, it was 2,500 feet deep, 600 miles wide, and over 2,000 miles long.

Eventually, a gap in those mountains formed, opening a path for the river we now know as the Mississippi to flow to the Gulf of Mexico.

As recently as 2014, geological consensus held that the Mississippi began flowing through the mountain gap around 20 million years ago.  But in 2018, scientists concluded, based on the age of zircon fragments they excavated from sandstone in southern Illinois, that the river began flowing much earlier - some 70 million years ago.  The Mississippi was thus born when dinosaurs still roamed the planet.  (By contrast, the Missouri River, in its current form, dates back a mere two million years.)

Still, 70 million years ago, the Mississippi was nowhere near as large as it would become.  The waterway grew as it added tributaries: the Platte, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Red Rivers around 60 million years ago.  The Mississippi was collecting water from the Rockies to the Appalachians; by four million years ago, its watershed had extended into Canada, and the Mississippi had grown to an enormous size, carrying four to eight times as much water as it does today - on the order of the Amazon today.

Course Changes.  Over geologic time, the Mississippi River has experienced numerous large and small changes to its main course, as well as additions, deletions, and other changes among its numerous tributaries - due to glaciers, earthquakes, and flooding.  Here are a few examples:

The Illinoian Glacier, about 200,000 to 125,000 years ago, blocked the Mississippi River near present-day Rock Island, Illinois, diverting it westward to its present channel, the current western border of Illinois.

Other changes in the course of the river have occurred because of earthquakes between the cities of Memphis, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri.  Three earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, estimated at approximately 8 on the Richter Scale, were said to have temporarily reversed the course of the Mississippi.  These earthquakes also created Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee from the altered landscape near the river.  

Beginning in 1844, successive flooding caused the Mississippi River to slowly encroach eastward in southern Illinois. A major flood in 1881 caused it to overtake the lower 10 miles of the Kaskaskia River, forming a new Mississippi channel.

In March 1876, the Mississippi suddenly changed course near the settlement of Reverie, Tennessee, leaving a small part of Tipton County, Tennessee, attached to Arkansas and separated from the rest of Tennessee by the new river channel.  Since this event was a forcible separation, rather than the effect of incremental erosion and deposition, the state line still follows the old channel.

Delta.  The Mississippi River Delta is the confluence of the Mississippi River with the Gulf of Mexico.  The river delta is a 4,700 square mile area of land that stretches from Vermilion Bay on the west, to the Chandeleur Islands in the east, on Louisiana's southeastern coast.  It is part of the Gulf of Mexico and the Louisiana coastal plain, one of the largest areas of coastal wetlands in the United States. 

The Mississippi River Delta, showing multiple river outlets into the Gulf of Mexico.

The modern Mississippi River Delta formed over the last approximately 5,000 years as the Mississippi River deposited sand, clay and silt along its banks and in adjacent basins.  Prior to the extensive leveeing of the Mississippi River that began in the 1930s, the river changed its course in search of a shorter route to the Gulf of Mexico approximately every 1,000-1,500 years. 

As the river changed course, the natural flow of freshwater and sediment changed as well, resulting in periods of land building and land loss in different areas of the delta.  This process by which the river changes course is known as avulsion, or delta-switching, and forms the variety of landscapes - the bays, bayous, coastal wetlands, and barrier islands - that make up the coastline of Louisiana.

In the past 5,000 years, the coastline of south Louisiana has advanced toward the Gulf from 15 to 50 miles.  Today, the Mississippi enters the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles downstream of New Orleans.

First Peoples

The Mississippi River basin was first settled by hunting - gathering people during the Archaic period, from 8000 BC to 1000 BC.  Evidence of early cultivation of sunflower, goosefoot, marsh elder plants for seeds, and indigenous squash, dates to the 4^th millennium BC.  The lifestyle gradually became more settled after around 1000 BC, with increasing evidence of shelter construction, pottery, and weaving.

A network of trade routes was active along the waterways between about AD 200 and AD 500, spreading common cultural practices over the entire area between the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes.  A period of more isolated communities followed, and agriculture introduced from Mesoamerica, based on maize, beans, and squash, gradually came to dominate. 

After around AD 800, an advanced agricultural society arose, today referred to as the Mississippian culture, with evidence of highly stratified complex chiefdoms and large population centers.  The Mississippian culture was known for building large earthen platform mounds, and was centered in the Mississippi River valley, but spanned much of the present Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States.

The most prominent of the Mississippian pre-Columbian cities, now called Cahokia, in southern Illinois, was occupied between about AD 600 and AD 1400 and at its peak numbered between 8,000 and 40,000 inhabitants, larger than London, England at that time.  When Europeans first explored the region in the early 16^th century, Cahokia and many other Mississippian cities had dispersed, perhaps due to increased social stress.

 

One of 80 earthen mounds found at Cahokia, directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis.

Note:  From here on in this paper, I’m dropping the anno Domini (AD) notation for dates.

Mississippian peoples were almost certainly ancestral to many of the Native American nations living along the Mississippi basin after 1400, which included:  the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Quapaw, Osage, Caddo, Natchez, and Tunica in the lower Mississippi, and the Sioux, Sac and Fox, Ojibwe, Pottawatomie, Illini, Menominee, and Winnebago in the upper Mississippi.

European Exploration

Spain and France were the first European nations to explore the Mississippi River and the river basin.  These explorations were key to establishing colonies in the Americas.

Spanish exploration of the Americas began in 1492, with Christopher Columbus’s first landing in the New World on a small island in the Bahamas (probably San Salvador). 

In 1519, Spanish explorer, Alonso Alvarez de Pineda sailed the entire Gulf of Mexico coastline, becoming the first European to spot the Mississippi River and confirming that Florida was not an island, as was previously believed.

In 1540, Spain commissioned Hernando de Soto to lead the first expedition into the interior of the North American continent.  From 1540 to 1543, de Soto traveled through present-day Florida and Georgia, and then into present day Alabama and Mississippi, reaching the Mississippi River in 1541.

Major French exploration of North America began in 1524, by looking for a route to the Pacific Ocean without success, and continued in 1534 when Jacques Cartier explored the coast of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence River, founding New France, French territory in the New World.

In 1673, French explorers Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette were the first to make the Mississippi River known to the European world through their voyage down the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Arkansas River - within 435 miles of the Gulf of Mexico.  Marquette and Joliet learned that the Mississippi continued to the south through hostile Spanish domains.  Fearing an encounter with the Spanish, they decided to return homeward, up the Mississippi River, and (with native guidance) a shorter path up the Illinois River.

In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and Henri de Tonti claimed the entire Mississippi River Valley for France. 

In 1699, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville rediscovered the mouth of the Mississippi River, and the French built the small fort of La Balise there to control river passage.

In 1718, about 100 miles upriver, New Orleans was established by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.

In 1738-1741, French Canadian voyagers and brothers Pierre Antoine and Paul Mallet, became the first Europeans known to have crossed the Great Plains.  Departing Kaskaskia Illinois, the brothers followed the Missouri River, then the Platte River and South Platte River to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  They returned following the Canadian River to the Mississippi River and finally to New Orleans.

In 1742-1743, Frenchmen Chevalier Verendrye and an unnamed brother, looking for a route to the Pacific Ocean, or a profitable source of furs, were the first Europeans to cross the northern Great Plains and see the Rocky Mountains.  They left Fort La Reine in today’s southern Canada, traveled south to the Mandan villages, and explored the northern Rockies via the Missouri River and overland. 

 

French explorations of the Mississippi River and basin.

Colonization

The map below shows France’s extensive colonization of southeastern Canada and America’s Mississippi River basin in 1750.  The land immediately to the west of the French colonization area was claimed by France, but not settled.  The entire northwest of the present-day United States was claimed by Great Britain at that time.

Map of French settlements in southeastern Canada and America’s Mississippi River basin in 1750 - before the French and Indian War, 1754-1763.

 

In the French and Indian War, 1754-1763, between Great Britain and France, fought (in America) over possession of New World colonies, France lost all its territories on the North American mainland.  The Treaty of Paris (1763) gave Great Britain rights to all land east of the Mississippi River and Spain rights to land west of the Mississippi.  Spain also ceded Florida to Britain to regain Cuba, which the British occupied during the war.

In the second Treaty of Paris (1783), ending the American Revolution and formally recognizing the United States as an independent nation, the following words appeared: “The navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States.”

France reacquired the Louisiana territory (see below) from Spain in the secret Third Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800., but the United States bought the territory from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

President Thomas Jefferson immediately commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-1806) to explore and map the newly acquired territory, to find a practical route across the western half of the continent to the Pacific Ocean, and to establish an American presence in this territory before European powers attempted to establish claims in the region. 

Following the Lewis and Clark expedition, in the 19^th century, during the height of the ideology of manifest destiny, the Mississippi River and several western tributaries, most notably the Missouri, formed pathways for the western expansion of the United States.

 

Modern map of the United States showing the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana territory.

 

The last serious European challenge to U.S. control of the Mississippi River came at the conclusion of the War of 1812, when British forces mounted an attack on New Orleans - the attack was repulsed by an American army under the command of General Andrew Jackson.

Steamboat Era

Before the advent of the steamboat, wooden flatboats, sometimes little more than rafts, carried goods down the Mississippi River.  There, the boats were broken up and sold as firewood because they could not make the trip back upstream. The return voyage was then made on foot or horseback.

Steamboats played a major role in the 19^th-century development of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, allowing practical large-scale transport of passengers and freight both up- and down-river.

Mississippi River steamboats benefited from technology and political changes leading up to their introduction.  Steamboats, propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers paddlewheels were introduced in England and the eastern U.S. in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.  After the U.S. bought the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, the U.S. was then free to expand steamboat operations westward out of the Ohio valley into the Mississippi basin.

The first steamboat (designed by inventor and engineer Robert Fulton) to travel the full length of the lower Mississippi, from the Ohio River to New Orleans, was the New Orleans in 1811.  By 1814, the New Orleans maintained a passenger and a cargo route, running between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi.  Its speed was about eight miles per hour downstream and three miles per hour upstream.

The upper Mississippi was treacherous, unpredictable, and to make traveling worse, the area was not properly mapped or surveyed.  Until the 1840s, only two trips a year to the Twin Cities, Minnesota landings were made by steamboats, which suggests it was not very profitable.

Steamboats entered trade in the 1820s, so the period 1830-1850 became the golden age of steamboats.  As there were few roads or rails in the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, river traffic was an ideal solution.  Cotton, timber and food came down the river, as did Appalachian coal.  The port of New Orleans boomed as it was the trans-shipment point to deep sea ocean vessels.  Steamers loaded with passengers and trade goods worked the entire Mississippi River basin from the trickles of Montana to the Ohio River, and down the Missouri and Tennessee, to the main channel of the Mississippi. 

Only with the arrival of the railroads in the 1880s, did steamboat traffic diminish.  Steamboats remained a feature until the 1920s.  Most have been superseded today by tow boats and barges.  (The amount of cargo that one 15-barge tow can move is equal to approximately the ability of nine hundred semi-trucks, with only ten percent of fuel usage.)  A few steamboats survive as icons - the Delta Queen and the River Queen for instance.

Among the several Mississippi River system steamboat companies was the noted Anchor Line, which, from 1859 to 1898, operated a luxurious fleet of steamers between St. Louis and New Orleans.

The steamboat era changed the economic and political life of the Mississippi, as well as the nature of travel itself.  The Mississippi began to attract a flourishing tourist trade.

The Mississippi River became a noteworthy part of American culture, primarily due to songs about the river and the writings of author Mark Twain.

Tens of songs were written about all aspects of the Mississippi.  One of the most famous of the songs is Ol' Man River (music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) from the 1927 musical Show Boat that contrasts the struggles and hardships of African American with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River.

A 23-year-old Missouri youth named Samuel Langhorne Clemens piloted Mississippi steamship boats from 1857 to 1859, until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic.  During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term “Mark Twain,” a boatman’s call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation.  In 1861, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by “Mark Twain” and continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years.

Mark Twain's book, Life on the Mississippi, first published as magazine articles in 1875, then as a complete book in 1885, covered steamboat commerce on the river, from 1830 to 1870, before more modern ships replaced the steamer.  Two of Twain’s popular quotes from the book are:

“The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise...”

“Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition.  But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored me while I lived.  All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!”

And all of us grew up reading about the river adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

 

Typical Mississippi River boat steamer from the 1850s.

Civil War

Control of the Mississippi River was a strategic objective of both sides in the American Civil War.  With rivers serving as the lifeblood of the Confederacy, steamboats permitted the rapid movement of heavy cargo up and down the waterways, particularly the Mississippi.  In 1862, Union forces coming down the river successfully cleared Confederate defenses on a small island at the Kentucky Bend of the river, and at Memphis, Tennessee, while Naval forces coming upriver from the Gulf of Mexico, captured New Orleans.  The remaining major Confederate stronghold was on the heights overlooking the river at Vicksburg, Mississippi.  The Union's Vicksburg Campaign (December 1862 to July 1863), and the fall of Port Hudson, located about 20 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, completed Union control of the lower Mississippi River.  The Union victory ending the Siege of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, was pivotal to the Union's final victory of the Civil War.

Selected 20^th and 21^st Century Events

Here are a few events that occurred in this time period; a discussion of navigation and flood control activity follows in the next section.

The "Big Freeze" of 1918-19 blocked Mississippi River traffic north of Memphis, Tennessee, preventing transportation of coal from southern Illinois.  This resulted in widespread shortages, high prices, and rationing of coal.

In 1962 and 1963, industrial accidents spilled 3.5 million gallons of soybean oil into the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers.  The oil covered the Mississippi River from St. Paul to Lake Pepin (on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin), creating an ecological disaster and a demand to control water pollution.

On October 20, 1976, the automobile ferry, MV George Prince, was struck by a ship traveling upstream as the ferry attempted to cross from Destrehan, Louisiana, to Luling, Louisiana.  Seventy-eight passengers and crew died; only eighteen survived the accident.

In 1988, the water level of the Mississippi dropped drastically.  The remains of wooden-hulled water craft were exposed in an area of 4.5 acres on the bottom of the Mississippi River at West Memphis, Arkansas.  Sunken ship remains dated to the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries.

In 1997, two portions of the Mississippi were designated as American Heritage Rivers: the lower portion around Louisiana and Tennessee, and the upper portion around Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin.

Navigation and Flood Control

Rough rafts made of logs, known as keel boats, were the early form of transportation on the Mississippi.  These slow-moving boats were replaced with the onset of the steamboats. 

Soon after steamboats appeared, a way was sought to tame the river for use as a transportation system of goods and people.

The task of maintaining a navigation channel in the Mississippi River is the responsibility of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which was established in 1802.  Projects began as early as 1829 to remove snags (e.g., trees and other obstacles), close off secondary channels, and excavate rocks and sandbars.

In 1900, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal was built to connect the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan via the Illinois River, providing a shipping route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, and easing Chicago water pollution problems.

Early in the 20^th century, thousands of rock-and-willow-mat wing dams (only extended partway into river) were installed all along the Mississippi to constrict the current and scour out a navigable channel.

In 1927, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 occurred - the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with 27,000 square miles inundated in depths of up to 30 feet over the course of several months in early 1927.  The uninflated cost of the damage has been estimated to be between 246 million and 1 billion dollars.  Over 630,000 people were directly affected, most (94%) in the lower Mississippi states of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, especially in the Mississippi Delta.  

To prevent future floods, under the Flood Control Act of 1928, the federal government built the world's longest system of levees (embankments built to prevent the overflow of a river) and floodways (separate channels built to take the floodwaters of a river).  There are no full (completely cross river) dams on the lower Mississippi; the river is solely constrained by the numerous levees and directed by numerous wing dams. 

During the 1920s to 1940s, 29 locks and dams were built on the upper Mississippi River to maintain the river channel at a depth of nine feet deep year-round for commercial barge traffic.  (The dams made the river deeper and wider, but did not stop it; no flood control was intended.)  Most barges can travel as far as Saint Paul.

Push tug / barge traffic on the Mississippi River.

 

In the lower Mississippi, from Baton Rouge to the mouth of the Mississippi, the navigation depth is 45 feet, allowing container ships and cruise ships to dock at the Port of New Orleans and ocean liners to reach Baton Rouge. 

In the 1950s, U.S. government scientists determined that the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana was starting to switch westward to the Atchafalaya River channel because of its much steeper path to the Gulf of Mexico, and that eventually the Atchafalaya River would capture the Mississippi River and become its main channel to the Gulf.  As a result, the U.S. Congress authorized a project called the Old River Control Structure, which has prevented the Mississippi from leaving its current channel that drains into the Gulf via New Orleans.

In 1993, the Great Flood of 1993 occurred - in the Midwestern United States, along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries, from April to October 1993.  The flood was also among the costliest and devastating to ever occur in the United States, with $15 billion in damages (then-year dollars).  The flooded area totaled around 30,000 square miles, in the states of Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, and was the worst such U.S. disaster since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

Today, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers actively creates and maintains spillways and floodways to divert periodic water surges into backwater channels and lakes, as well as route part of the Mississippi's flow into the Atchafalaya Basin and from there to the Gulf of Mexico, bypassing Baton Rouge and New Orleans.  Also, the Corps actively cuts the necks of horseshoe bends, allowing the water to move faster and reducing flood heights

Ferries and Bridges

Ferries.  The following was adapted from “Crossing water - Mississippi River ferry tales,” countryroadsmagazine.org.

The Mississippi River was considered one of the most difficult rivers in America to cross.  Before steamboats and bridges, many types of boats and methods of crossing were used to ferry people and goods across its rushing current.  Native Americans would use two canoes to float a wagon, placing the front and back wheels from each side of the wagon in a canoe.  These were replaced by flat-bottomed boats, which were rowed, poled, or paddled across the river, sometimes attached to a rope that spanned the crossing point.  There were also skiffs that were secured by chain to a buoy anchored midstream.  Team boats appeared in the early 1800s, on which were boarded mules or horses to power treadmills that drove paddle wheels. 

As the country expanded westward, traffic bottlenecked at the river where travelers would wait for days in lines up to ten miles long to board a ferry.  These bottlenecks eased with emergence of steamboats, allowing much larger ferries to carry people and goods faster and in more comfort.

Bridges.  The following was adapted from “Mississippi River,” newworldencyclopedia.org.

There are at least 130 bridges that cross the Mississippi River.  No highway or railroad tunnels cross under the river.

The first bridge across the Mississippi River was built in 1856.  It spanned the river between Arsenal Island at Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport, Iowa.  Steamboat pilots of the day, fearful of competition from the railroads, considered the new bridge "a hazard to navigation."  Two weeks after the bridge opened the steamboat Effie Afton rammed part of the bridge and started it on fire.  Legal proceedings ensued - with a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln defending the railroad.  The lawsuit went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and was eventually ruled in favor of Lincoln and the railroad.

Below is a list and general overview of selected Mississippi bridges that have notable engineering or landmark significance, with their cities or locations.  They are sequenced from the upper Mississippi's source to the lower Mississippi's mouth.

• Stone Arch Bridge - a former Great Northern Railroad (now pedestrian) bridge in Minneapolis, and now a National Historic Engineering Landmark.
• Black Hawk Bridge, connecting Lansing, Iowa and Allamakee County, Iowa to rural Crawford County, Wisconsin, locally referred to as the Lansing Bridge, and documented in the Historic American Engineering Record.
• Julien Dubuque Bridge - connecting Dubuque, Iowa and East Dubuque, Illinois that is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
• Interstate 74 Bridge - connecting Moline, Illinois to Bettendorf, Iowa, a twin suspension bridge, also known historically as the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge.
• Rock Island Government Bridge - connecting Rock Island, Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, located just southwest of the site of the first bridge across the Mississippi River.  It is one of only two bridges in the world with two sets of railroad tracks above the auto lanes.  It is also co-located with Lock and Dam No. 15 - the largest roller dam in the world.  (The purpose of the rolling is to dissipate the energy gained by the water as it falls from the top of the dam.  Otherwise, the energy would be exerted downstream, causing significant bank and river bed erosion.)

 

Aerial view of Government Bridge and Lock and Dam No. 15 on the Mississippi River between Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport, Iowa.  The Government Bridge, a combined auto and railroad bridge, spans the river right over the locks, necessitating a turntable drawbridge to clear the locks.

• Rock Island Centennial Bridge - connecting Rock Island, Illinois to Davenport, Iowa.
• Fort Madison Toll Bridge (or Santa Fe Bridge) - in Fort Madison, the largest double-deck swing-span bridge in the world.  It is the last operating swing bridge over the Mississippi River for automobile traffic and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
• Clark Bridge (also known as the "Super Bridge" as the result of an appearance on PBS program Nova).  This cable-stay bridge constructed in 1994 connects Alton, Illinois to Black Jack, Missouri.  It is the northernmost river crossing in the St. Louis metropolitan area, and is named after explorer William Clark.
• Chain of Rocks Bridge - on the northern edge of St. Louis, Missouri; famous for a 22-degree bend halfway across and connecting sections of Historic U.S. 66 across the Mississippi.
• Eads Bridge - connecting St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Louis, Illinois; the first major steel bridge in the world, and also a National Historic Landmark.
• Hernando de Soto Bridge - carries Interstate 40 to connect Memphis, Tennessee and West Memphis, Arkansas; listed in Guinness Book of World Records for its unique structural "letter" shape.
• Frisco Bridge - the first crossing of the lower Mississippi and the longest cantilever truss steel railroad bridge in North America when it opened on May 12, 1892.  It connects Memphis, Tennessee and West Memphis, Arkansas and is listed as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
• Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge - the longest Warren truss-style bridge in the United States.  It carries Interstate 55 to connect Memphis, Tennessee and West Memphis, Arkansas; also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
• Huey P. Long Bridge - Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, the first Mississippi River span built in Louisiana.
• Crescent City Connection - connects the east and west banks of New Orleans, Louisiana; the fifth-longest cantilever bridge in the world.

Mississippi River Today

Much of what follows was adapted from “Mississippi River:  A Cultural Treasure,” americanrivers.org.

Business, Ecology, and Recreation.  Approximately 12 million people live in the 125 counties and parishes along the Mississippi River. 

The Mississippi supports a $12.6 billion shipping industry, with 35,300 related jobs.  It’s one of the greatest water highways on earth, carrying commerce and food for the world.  Approximately 470 million tons of cargo are moved on the Mississippi each year.  Wheat from the Midwest and petrochemicals from the Gulf of Mexico are among its major transports.  Half the nation’s corn and soybeans are barged on the section above the Ohio River confluence.

The Mississippi River Valley brings in $7 billion from forest and agriculture products and $29 million from manufacturing each year. 

Tourism, fishing, and recreation generate about $21.4 billion each year, and contribute 351,000 jobs along the length of the Mississippi.

The river and its floodplain support more than 400 different species of wildlife; some 40 percent of North America’s waterfowl migrate along the route of the Mississippi River.

There are seven National Park Service sites along the corridor, including the 72-mile Mississippi National River and Recreation Area in Minnesota, dedicated to protecting and interpreting the Mississippi River itself. 

The other six National Park Service sites along the river are (listed from north to south):

·         Effigy Mounds National Monument

·         Gateway Arch National Park (includes Gateway Arch)

·         Vicksburg National Military Park

·         Natchez National Historical Park

·         New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park

·         Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve

  

Pat and I are signed up to cruise the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Memphis on this sternwheeler.

 

Environmental Concerns.  Following the monumental Mississippi River flood of 1927, an era of federally funded levees, dredging, and diking ensued.  The lock and dam system turned a dynamic river system into something that resembles a long series of lakes, which are filling up with silt.  In man’s attempt to control the river, we have leveed more than 2,000 miles of the Mississippi watershed, isolating it from its floodplain.

As a result, the mosaic of backwaters, wetlands, and swamps that once spread out seasonally across floodplain ecosystems were drained and cut off from the river, degrading habitat and threatening the vast array of fish and wildlife that traditionally call the Mississippi River home. 

A 2010 St. Louis Dispatch editorial had this to say:

“For thousands of years, the Mississippi River provided fertile habitat for millions of birds and fishes along its 3,000 miles. Then came the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, damming and channeling the big river until it assumed its form today: A giant barge canal, mostly devoid of animal life.”

In 2015, the Nature Conservancy's project called "America's Rivershed Initiative" announced a 'report card' assessment of the entire Mississippi River basin and gave the grade of D+.  The assessment noted the aging navigation and flood control infrastructure along with multiple environmental problems.

These days, the Mississippi is more an over-engineered canal prone to catastrophic flood than the dynamic natural system it once was.  While some areas are reconnecting the floodplain to the river, it still struggles to regain natural floodplain functions, and in many areas, levees are seen as the only tool to manage flood risk.  In addition to the lingering habitat-degradation problems, the river now contends with invasive species and excessive nutrient pollution from agriculture that isn’t regulated under the Clean Water Act.

Moreover, the expansion of the Mississippi River’s navigation system is still being pursued due to commercial interests.  Several efforts to build new or raise existing levees along the upper Mississippi remain.  There are also proposals to build contentious and costly new locks at several dams on the upper Mississippi River. 

Biologists warn that an ecological collapse would likely occur of the upper Mississippi River if the current navigation systems expand or even just continue as is.

Clearly, major attention and action are required to help restore lost habitat and river function.

I’ll close with a repeat of one of Mark Twain’s quotes: “The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise...”