Finley's 1827 State Map of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Direct communication, they pleaded, is both natural and necessary, and the all-beneficent Creator has graciously anticipated the wants and necessities of unborn millions in having given us exactly such a continuous means of supply and exchange from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico. The petition even cited editorials from the St. Paul papers stressing the importance of Minneapolis to the region's economy. Porters gunboats arrived and began shelling the defenses. Washington Crossing the Delaware By Emanuel Leutze Beautiful Detailed Print . The lock and dam project hopelessly mired, the Corps, during its 1890 survey, evaluated removing boulders and rocks to encourage navigation.88 Major Alexander Mackenzie, the Rock Island District commander who had taken over this part of the river with the change in funding in 1888, suspected that Congress might authorize the Corps to remove the boulders in lieu of building locks and dams, even though it had authorized $25,000 to plan for a lock and dam in 1873. To further increase the water available for navigation, Congress authorized the Corps to construct six dams at the headwaters of the Mississippi, in northern Minnesota, between 1880 and 1907. Prior to the war, with a few exceptions, Congress and/or the President had opposed a federal role in internal improvements.26, The 1866 act provided for the first project to focus on the whole upper river.27 It directed the Corps to survey the Mississippi River between St. Anthony Falls and the Rock Island Rapids, with a view to ascertain the feasible means, by economizing the water of the stream, of insuring the passage, at all navigable seasons, of boats drawing four feet of water. In less than 100 years, these projects would radically transform the river that nature had created over millions of years and that Native Americans had hunted along, canoed on, and fished in for thousands of years. Shermans troops, meanwhile, demonstrated against the citys northern defenses. 196-97, 199; Tweet, History of Transportation, 38-39. The Windom Committee Spurred by the Granger movement and navigation conventionspartly out of fear and partly out of a genuine concern to help farmers and businessesMinnesota Senator William Windom asked the Senate to establish a committee to examine the transportation problem and recommend solutions to it. No. Grant Stevenson. Background on the Crossing Strategy To examine Quad Cities crossing needs, a study was conducted between 1996 and 1998 that culminated in the identification of three crossing improvements in the . From his experiences, Merrick learned much about the natural river. Subsequently he turned to newspaper editing and publishing.20 There are two locks.93 Minneapolis had somehow won the debate over building one or two dams. . This is the general phone line at the Mississippi River Visitor Center. Wildlife Although the river is very different than it was when the city was founded in 1764, a wide diversity of wildlife can still be found in and around it. By dividing the river, islands limited the water available to the navigation channel and thereby its depth. Bridges Over a dozen bridges cross the Mississippi River in the St. Louis metro area. By 1905, the Engineers had built about 340 wing and closing dams from the Minnesota River to the southern end of the MNRRA corridor below Hastings. Tweet, History of Transportation on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, p. 22. Kane, St. Anthony, p. 175, says Deprived of the navigation facilities they coveted, persuasive Minneapolitans continued to urge the federal government to act. proof Most of the trail crossed Arkansas from northeast to southwest, entering at Hix's Ferry (later Pitman's Ferry) across the The Saints left in companies and on June 14, 1846 Grandfather with 225 others arrived at the Missouri River, where a large . Another in September 1862 mentions 720 cattle crossed at Natchez and . For months he had studied them, conferred with subordinates, undertaken personal reconnaissances and endured failures. The Mississippi River lies entirely within the United States. [and] suggested that the Congress study the problem and find a solution. Windom, Select Committee, p. 7; Schonberger, Transportation to the Seaboard, p. 29. issues at that time included . Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. The millers recognized that the release of water from the reservoirs for navigation in the later summer and fall would increase the flow of water to keep their mills turning longer and more consistently. The project would permanently reshape the river between Lock and Dam 1 (the Ford Dam) and St. Anthony Falls. Rafting companies and steamboat interests had employed wing dams to scour the channel at troublesome bars. Historically, the Quad Cities had the first Mississippi River bridge crossing in the United States. Thompson gives a rule which is better adapted to the present project (the 6-foot channel), in which he places the dams in straight reaches the full channel width apart, increasing the space 25 per cent on the convex side and diminishing it 25 per cent on the concave side, depending on the degree of curvature. The works built under the 41/2-foot channel project embody these national movements and local efforts. Kane, Rivalry, p. 322, suggests that the federal government recognized its obligation for improving navigation in 1873 by authorizing $25,000 for the project. Questions had arisen about his sobriety, with the War Department sending an observer to his headquarters. And in a speech before the Senate, he asserted that it was an admitted fact that present transportation facilities between the interior and the seaboard were totally inadequate. These transportation networks, he charged, were controlled by powerful monopolies who dictate their own terms to the people. No general plan had been developed or implemented. Dewey was lured to Cassville by its promise as the potential capital of the Wisconsin Territory. Just past the crest, the channel quickly became deeper.30 Normally, the river would begin cutting through the steep slope on the back side of the bar and another bar would eventually begin forming downstream of it. The St. Paul businessmen included William E. McNair, Eugene M. Wilson, William S. King, Edward Murphy, and Isaac Atwater. In doing so, they would contribute to the drive for navigation improvement at the same time they were throttling shipping on the river. 530, 1649-50; Annual Report, 1907, pp. 1851 (age 35), Goddard, George He came from England with his wife and seven children, five of whom died before reaching Utah. The first enslaved Africans brought to the colony during the John Law Company period (1717-1731) were housed directly across from the settlement on the West Bank in what is now Algiers Point. . Mackenzie made the surveys, including borings, during the low-water season of 1893 and concluded that the Corps would have to build two locks and dams to bring navigation to the old steamboat landing below the Washington Avenue Bridge. The charming shops of downtown Bemidji / Lisa Meyers McClintick Other Sites Along the Great River. Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long both not only commented on how confined the river became above Hastings, they rowed its width to see how few strokes they needed. "This was like a day after he crossed the river. Demonstrating the Grange's early concern for improving the Mississippi River, the state Grange convention of 1869 featured the river. Rachel Kramer/CC-BY 2.0. Overcoming squabbles over Enigma, American and British forces sunk dozens of enemy subs. In his memoirs Grant wrote of that signal achievement: When this was effected, I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equaled since.I was on dry ground on the same side of the river with the enemy. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Doc. Support for the project came from the company's stockholders, navigation boosters and city business leaders. Pike took 40 strokes in his bateau and Long only 16 in his skiff.12. 30, 50-52. Saint Paul . This misplaces the authority for authorizing the project with the Corps instead of Congress and makes the Corps a proactive proponent of the project, which she does not demonstrate they were. As long as the Corps ran the dredges, it could limit the depth of the cut on a bar and preserve much of the deeper pool behind it. . Other boats had been plying the upper riverIndian canoes, piroques, flatboats and keelboatsbut the Virginia announced a new era. Deep was anything over three feet. March 26, 2015. He moved on to represent Minnesota in the U.S. House for 6 years as a Republican. Barns also argues that Kelley came away from his southern trip with the idea for the Grange, and that Kelley had a more radical organization in mind from the outset than Buck and other historians admit. 1; see U.S. Congress, House, Survey of the Upper Mississippi River, Exec. Annual Report 1872, p. 310. Doc. They also demanded a navigable river so they could deliver the bounty of their labor and their new land to the country and the world. Trees filled and enshrouded it. Doc. On November 20, 1855, the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad, which later became part of the Rock Island System, operated the first . 148, 151-52, 155; Schonberger, Transportation to the Seaboard, pp. . A newly completed lock and dam and another one under construction promised to make Minneapolis the head of navigation. Crossing the Mississippi River, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 20,655 views Nov 24, 2015 77 Dislike Share Save Josh Huffines 578 subscribers Eastbound on I-10 crossing the Mississippi River in. Roald Tweet, History of Transportation on the Upper Mississippi & Illinois Rivers, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 21-22; Petersen, Captains and Cargoes, 228, 234-38; Hartsough, Canoe, 74-75. On the early part of the journey, before they reached the Mississippi river, they bought four oxen trying to find a pair that was matched and would work together on the long haul to Oregon. But, as a result of the economic panic beginning that year, a number of unprecedented droughts and the Civil War, navigation, they brashly claimed, had receded some sixteen miles, to St. Paul, where all the freight destined to these cities, (Minneapolis and St. Anthony) and the vast regions north and west . Over the next five years, the city's newspapers, civic leaders and the Territorial Legislature called for locks and dams to carry the booming steamboat trade to Minneapolis. 15 A few miles below St. Paul, the river sometimes became so shallow that boats would have to stop within sight of the city. The inland and intercoastal waterways, with the Upper Mississippi highlighted in red. Annual Report, 1891, p. 2154; Mackenzie, Annual Report, 1890, p. 2034, reported that the Corps had completed several examinations of the area over the last year, in company with the Minneapolis representatives of the river interests.. 17-18. A wave would start at the head of the reach and begin moving down, even when the current slowed. Shortly after the glaciers withdrew from southern Minnesota some 10,000 years ago, St. Anthony Falls stretched across the river valley near downtown St. Paul. As water and ice eroded the sandstone out from underneath the limestone at the edge of the falls, the limestone broke off in large slabs, and the falls receded. Railroads moved their freight quicker, giving their users greater flexibility in responding to market changes. The bridge was included in the Phase II survey as it is a large of exceptional span or overall length, which according . One measure of this was the number of times steamboats docked at the upper river's port cities. It did not begin building the project, focusing instead on a provision in the grant that limited the company to selling no more than one section of land within a township. To steamboats, even half a foot was important. By 1907, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Hastings and other river cities, through their successful lobbying and through the Corps, had changed the upper Mississippi River dramatically. This measurement takes into account the full mainstem of the river. William Washburn went so far as to purchase land at one of the reservoir sites in anticipation of a private or federal project there and later gave the land to the government. In response to their lobbying, Congress authorized four broad projects to improve navigation on the upper river and a number of site-specific projects in the Twin Cities metropolitan area since 1866. Todd Shallat, Structures in the Stream, Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Egineers, (Austin: University of Texas, 1994), p. 141. Wing dams especially caused bank erosion by forcing the river away from one shore and against the other. Sandbars posed the most persistent and frequent problem. At Lock and Dam 1, the Engineers had begun constructing the lock.92 Few, if any, spectators watching the Itura paddle through Lock 2 imagined that the new facility would be destroyed within 5 years. Led by Ignatius Donnelly, Grange supporters had organized the People's Anti-Monopoly party, with a platform striking at monopolies, advocating state railroad controls, and denouncing postwar corruption. Shanai Matteson, an artist and community organizer who grew up in Palisade, stands at the site where the Line 3 oil pipeline will cross underneath the Mississippi River . Hundreds of miles of riverbank had been secured with riprap. https://www.historynet.com/crossing-the-mississippi/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, Turmoil in Richmond: Joe Johnston, Jefferson Davis Command Alliance Was Doomed From the Start, How Allied Forces Used Code and Hunches To Turn the Tables on German U-Boats. The Mississippi River gave birth to most cities along its banks, and those cities did all they could to ensure that the river would nurture their growth. Between 1800 and 1860, 'at least 875,000 . In 1867, they held, according to one historian, the most important navigation improvement convention before 1873. Lauren McCoy dove deep to explore how it was a means of freedom. 2, 10, 22, 46. Some easterners came to take the fashionable tour. Arriving in St. Louis or at other railheads on the river's east bank, these excursionists traveled upstream, sometimes to St. Anthony Falls, imbibing the river's beauty (see the above references). Between 1823 and 1847, most boats carried lead and worked around Galena, Illinois. 341, p. 14; Annual Report, 1879, p. 111, see figures 1, 2, and 3 and Plate 3. p. 213. To subscribe, click here. For physical reasons, a single lock and dam must lie entirely within the limits of Minneapolis, or entirely within the limits of St. Paul. The Mississippi River is the second longest river in North America measuring a total length of 2320 miles from its traditional source at Lake Itasca. 152-53. He questioned the value of removing boulders, believing that the steep grade and rapid current required locks and dams. Portending the coming conflict with Minneapolis, St. Paul citizens criticized the project, as it would steal from them their valuable position as the head of navigation. La Crosse, Wisconsin, joined these cities, becoming the terminus of the Milwaukee and La Crosse in 1858. It is a story with local and national significance. He does not provide a location for this work and there is no mention of it in later reports, however. . The Mississippi and her tributaries are natural outlets for the west and northwest, Kelley insisted, but how little attention is given to their improvement. Railroads, he charged, control the river front in every town on the river; their boats can land freight without paying wharfage and people consider it all right. While railroads had received huge land grants, steamboats had not. 84-85, 91. Carey's 1822 Geographical, Statistical and Historical State Map of Arkansas. 111 E. Kellogg Blvd., Suite 105 As a result, Warren favored dredging. Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing . . must break bulk and be carried in wagons to their destination. A lock and dam, the state contended, would extend navigation to its natural and proper terminus.76. Examples: a dried up lake, a destroyed building, a hill leveled by mining. 318-19. The conference organizers' goal was to impress upon these key political officials the depth of the shipping crisis. The Corps of Engineers was working on a project to save the falls. The river pioneers once forded with their wagons and livestock no longer existed. While the Minnesota legislature appointed someone else to finish Norton's term, Windom won the seat in 1871. Millers at St. Anthony Falls especially pushed for reservoirs above the falls. Some steamboats might land only once, while others returned many times. A circular trail connected the head of navigation of the Mississippi River with Pembina, North Dakota. Nick seems somewhat disappointed in the Mississippi's appearance, although happy that he has seen the great American river. Now as to the duplication of locks and dams; two instead of one. 247, 40th Cong., 2d sess., p. 9. Those that swayed back and forth with the current they called sawyers. 7-8. After reviewing various proposals, the committee recommended that Congress regulate some railroad operations and that it authorize an intense program of waterway improvements. A day earlier, the St. Paul Daily Dispatch had declared that the dam had given St. Paul a water power equal to St. Anthony, and would provide enough power to make St. Paul one of the largest manufacturing cities on the continent.81 Through a deal between Meeker and a number of St. Paul businessmen, St. Paulites had gained control of Meeker's company and would get the waterpower created by the dam, even if Minneapolis and the state thought it overshadowed by St. Anthony Falls.82, On March 6, 1869, the state awarded the land grant to the Mississippi River Improvement and Manufacturing Company. Overall the dam was 600 feet long and six to ten feet deep.62 From this experimental dam, channel constriction would grow into a comprehensive and expansive project that would reconfigure the upper river's landscape and ecology. The density of channel constriction works and the degree to which they physically and ecologically changed the river increased gradually over the project's history. Many passengers came from the East; others came from Europe, fleeing famine in Ireland and political unrest on the continent. ft. This steep slope, combined with a narrow gorge and limestone boulders left by the retreat of the falls, made the river through this reach too treacherous for steamboat navigation.25 Thus, St. Paul had become the head of navigation. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. The Hernando de Soto Bridge, named after the Spanish explorer who reached the Mississippi River in 1541, opened to automobile traffic on August 2, 1973. The Mississippi River Route was first explored by canoes, quickly followed by paddle boats, in a seemingly endless . He also sold boat-stores and groceries to the steamboats that stopped at the levee. They yearned to make their city the head of navigation. Hillhouse reported that the Caffreys work had included 1,600 feet of wing dams. Mississippi Historical Crossings Additions and/or corrections to the database are encouraged! During the frontier era, settlers used old animal and Indian trails, fording most streams or building crude rafts to cross larger rivers. They would have to eliminate the wide shallows and sandbars and the thou- sands of little pools that Warren had once sought to preserve. 1682-83; U.S. Congress, Senate, Construction of Locks and Dams in the Mississippi River, 53d Cong., 2d sess., Exec. Annual Report, 1908, pp. 65 Annual Report, 1880, p. 1495. Subsequent engineers reduced this number to six. . he concluded, calling on Congress to appropriate funding for every navigable stream in the West and to open the natural outlets free to all.47 To restore river traffic, Kelley insisted that the Mississippi needed grants like those given to railroads, and the Grange had to establish an agent in St. Louis to buy and sell Minnesota's products. The committee recommended that Congress authorize surveys and get cost estimates prepared as early as possible in order to mature a plan for the radical improvement of the river, and of all its navigable tributaries.58 The committee suggested that the Corps establish a channel of 41/2 to 6 feet for the upper Mississippi River.59 To create a channel of these depths, the committee acknowledged, would require constricting the river with wing dams and closing dams.60. Cook completed his survey between 1866 and 1867 and, to Meeker's surprise, recommended that a lock and dam be constructed at Meeker Island, with a 13-foot lift.79 Cook's report and lobbying by Representative Donnelly and Senator Alexander Ramsey finally convinced Congress to give the State of Minnesota a 200,000-acre land grant to finance the dam, rather than having the Corps build it. From the building boat, Alberta Kirchner recalled, . 229-42), Barns addresses three issues concerning Kelley. From 1850 to 1870, it delivered supplies and furs on two-wheeled carts between St. Paul, Minnesota and the frontier. The fourth longest river in the world goes through or forms the border of 10 states. He learned that Minneapolis and St. Anthony (the community on the rivers east bank that merged with Minneapolis in 1872) had funded the removal of boulders to encourage steamboats to travel above St. Paul. Annual Reports, 1867, pp. But it held little chance of success and was eventually abandoned. pdf i74-mrc-bro.pdf (663.5 kB) Download the I-74 Mississippi River Crossings Brochure. Further work on the project, he declared, had to wait until the Engineers could take borings, which they could not do until the state returned the grant. Kane, Rivalry, pp. Edward L. Pross, A History of Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Bills, 1866-1933, Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1938, p. 44. Major General Ulysses S. Grant stood over maps searching for answers. . Navigation boosters in Minneapolis failed, however, to convince Congress of the importance of their project. Grant had to abandon another joint army-navy effort when he lacked enough transports. . In their 1895 Annual Report, the Engineers reported that releasing water from the Headwaters reservoirs had successfully raised the water level in the Twin Cities by 12 to 18 inches, helping navigation interests and the millers. The Mississippi flows for some 2,300 miles, from Minneapolis to New Orleans, and into the Gulf of Mexico. George Byron Merrick, Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: The Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863, Appendix B, Opening of Navigation at St. Paul, 1844-1862, (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987), p. 295. Kane, Rivalry, pp. Solon J. Buck, Granger Movement, A Study of Agricultural Organization and Its Political, Economic and Social Manifestations, 1870-1880, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), pp. Snags could, in an instant, impale a steamboat or tear it apart.11 The natural river became surprisingly narrow in places. . . In June and July of 1891, Mackenzie carried out even more accurate surveys of most of the river from the Minneapolis steamboat warehouse to the Short Line bridge below Meeker Island and of select areas down to the Minnesota River; see Annual Report, 1891, p. 2154. In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson sent a young army Lieutenant, Zebulon Pike, into the area to find a suitable site to build a military outpost. Kane, St. Anthony, p. 96, points out that the state never transferred the grant to the company. Thomas A. At Dibbles Point, the shoreline had eroded 15 to 20 feet in one year due to a wing dam built at Prescott Island, near Prescott.67 To protect shores from naturally eroding or from being undercut by the constricted channel, the Corps protected hundreds of miles of shoreline with brush mats and rock. Assistant Engineer W.A. Gary F. Browne, The Railroads: Terminals and Nexus Points in the Upper Mississippi Valley, (in John S. Wozniak ed., Historic Lifestyles in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, (New York: University Press of America, 1983), p. 84, says the first railroad reached the Mississippi River at Rock Island on February 22, 1854. I expect to get through it successfully however.. . One dam would be blown up within 5 years of its completion and another would have to be redesigned and the completed part rebuilt. .65 Once the willow mats had been laid in the water, the workers would sink them with rock. As cited in U. S. Congress, House, Letter from the Secretary of War, Transmitting, with a Letter from the Chief of Engineers, Report of Estimate for Six-Foot Channel in the Mississippi River between the Missouri River and St. Paul, Minn., 59th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. Hundreds of islands, some forming and others being cut away, divided the natural river, dispersing its waters into innumerable side channels and backwaters. This time I have to overcome obstacles to reach him., When Grant finally presented his plan to his senior officers, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman voiced opposition to it. In 1836, the ferry carried a 23-year-old New Yorker named Nelson Dewey across the river. Between 1866 and 1869, three more railroads crossed the river to Iowa, and by 1877, thirteen railroad bridges spanned the upper river (Figure 5).40 Railroads greatly increased the countrys ability to move commodities, and, yet, railroads would provoke and inflame a shipping crisis. The Upper Mississippi, that is the Mississippi from its source to the mouth of the Missouri, drains 173,000 sq. Railroads, more than the river, would meet the regions need, but not without a price, a price much too high for some. A significant historical month for this entry is October 1885. They would have to alter the pattern by which sand and silt moved along the river bottom. In these reaches, Warren found that the river seems, as it were, lost, and indecisive which way to go and the pilot is scarcely able to find the line of deepest water even in daylight, and is unable to proceed at night with any confidence.31 The small pools behind the bars would play an important part in Warren's strategy for navigation improvement on the upper river. A 1903-1905 Corps navigation map shows the river ribbed with wing dams and closing dams and lined with hundreds of miles of riprap. This act signaled a new era of internal improvements and the beginning of dramatic changes to the upper Mississippi River. Doc. Mississippi was given title to more than three million acres of swamp and overflow land along its northwestern border with the Mississippi River. In view of the hold which this method has taken upon the minds of river men, and the difficulties, uncertainty, and expense which attend the use of dams, Warren concluded, I have determined to recommend the employment of these dredging machines.37 In 1867 the Corps initiated a program of dredging sandbars, snagging, clearing overhanging trees and removing sunken vessels to create the 4-foot channel. Islands created dangerous currents.13 From just below Hastings to St. Anthony Falls roughly 40 islands broke the rivers flow. And the Midwest needed the South's cotton, rice, sugar, and molasses. Contrary to most histories that follow Dixon, A Traffic History, p. 48, in saying that there were thirteen bridges across the Mississippi River by 1880, Patrick Brunet, The Corps of Engineers and Navigation Improvements on the Channel of Upper Mississippi River to 1939, Masters Thesis, (Austin, University of Texas, 1977), p. 46, says that there were fourteen bridges across the river by 1877, and he lists them. Minnesota Historical Society. With each new rail connection, steamboats made shorter trips between ports. On the Mississippis west bank, Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand marched his XIII Corps and two divisions from Maj. Gen. James B. McPhersons XVII Corps south to Hard Times, La., opposite Grand Gulf, the planned crossing point. Windom had already served in the House for a decade. Echoing the beliefs of their counterparts downstream, Minneapolis boosters pointed to the divine purpose of their project. . 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