The first European settlement in the Twin Cities area was Fort Snelling. . Alberta Kirchner Hill, Out With the Fleet, Minnesota History, (1961):286. The conservationist and local hero hails from the Quad Cities, a 300,000-person metropolitan area spanning two states on either side of the Mississippi River. According to one historian, 'the Mississippi River gave slavery a whole new lease on life' (Johnson, 2013: 6-7, 146). With river traffic failing and railroads monopolizing the regions transportation, many farmers and business interests believed they were facing a shipping crisis. Millers at St. Anthony Falls especially pushed for reservoirs above the falls. Solon J. Buck, who wrote the classic study of the Grange, observed that, although avowedly nonpolitical, the phenomenal increase in the membership of the order during 1873 and 1874 awakened the liveliest interest, and sometimes apprehension, among politicians throughout the Union.45 As a result, he says, the New York Tribune, referring to the Grange, declared that within a few weeks it has menaced the political equilibrium of the most steadfast states.46 While the Grange refused to form a political party or actively participate in the established parties, its members did not. In 1876, he returned to Wisconsin to becomefittinglya railway agent. Sitting on a bluff on the rivers eastern bank and shielded to the north by a maze of swamps, bayous and bluffs, Vicksburg posed a multitude of problems to Union planners. In 1872, Captain J. Throckmorton argued that while wing dams would probably not work for the upper river, closing dams would. 1491, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), pp. At this point, Minneapolitans began fighting among themselves over the project.83, Millers feared a competing water power so close to St. Anthony Falls and believed that the project might jeopardize federal funding for repair work at the falls. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. Midwestern farmers sent grain to Chicago, and Chicago merchants and eastern manufacturers sent their goods back on the railroads. It runs through ten states, and many people today just see the Mississippi River as a bunch of water. Tornado warnings and bow echos were everywhere, but once it crossed the river, it immediately started weakening. They had closed nearly all the side channels. Opponents to the amendment included waterpower magnates William D. Washburn and Richard Chute. Construction of the five-and-a-half-mile, six-lane bridge cost fifty-seven million dollars. In St. Louis, the Mississippi remained above flood stage for 144 days between April 1 and September 30, 1993. This is a list of all current and notable former bridges or other crossings of the Upper Mississippi River which begins at the Mississippi River's source and extends to its confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois . 1491, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 704. Kane, Rivalry, pp. Where steamboat pilots followed the deepest channel, as it hugged one shore or the other, leaning trees might sweep poorly placed cargo or an unwary passenger from a steamboat's deck. The solution, they insisted, lay in improving the nation's waterways, especially the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Kane, St. Anthony, p. 175, says Deprived of the navigation facilities they coveted, persuasive Minneapolitans continued to urge the federal government to act. as the mat went down under the load . David A. Lanegran and Anne Mosher-Sheridan, The European Settlement of the Upper Mississippi River Valley: Cairo, Illinois, to Lake Itasca, Minnesota1540 to 1860, in John S. Wozniak ed., Historic Lifestyles in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, (New York: University Press of America, 1983), pp. As a result, Warren favored dredging. In 1867, they held, according to one historian, the most important navigation improvement convention before 1873. Dewey was lured to Cassville by its promise as the potential capital of the Wisconsin Territory. The Rock Island Bridge Company had been formed in 1853, but it wasn't until April 9, 1856, when the long-awaited Mississippi River Bridge - spanning from Rock Island to Davenport opened. In 1858, when Minnesota became a state, the new legislature sent a petition to Congress requesting that the federal government improve the river for navigation above St. Paul.70, While Minneapolis navigation boosters focused on shipping, others recognized the river's hydropower potential between the falls and St. Paul. 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. Location: Illinois, United States. They would have to alter the pattern by which sand and silt moved along the river bottom. . Hartsough, Canoe, pp. The island divided the river, and the navigation channel sometimes ran on the east side and sometimes on the west. m., over which the annual rainfall averages . Annual Report, 1894, pp. This map displays the three land-based migration routes from the Carolinas and eastern Georgia to the newly opened lands of southern Mississippi. 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). . The Vicksburg Riverfront Murals are located on the Yazoo Diversion Canal levee wall. The first ferries crossing from Piggott's complex to St. Louis were pirogues, small boats similar to canoes, made from hollowed out logs. Rivers proved to be an unfailing source of trouble. a splashing began. Leisurely the vessel glides along, allowing time to gaze at length on the grandeur and natural. Twenty-seven river miles downstream, at Hastings, they recorded a rise of about one foot and at Red Wing about one-half foot. Railroad expansion following the Civil War accelerated the pace of the Midwest's unprecedented population and agricultural growth. The Civil War then delayed construction of the railroad. Ibid., p. 243; The Select Committee recommended a depth of 5 feet at low water for St. Paul to St. Louis. Maybe, at a few places, especially between St. Paul and Hastings, settlers could have waded across on some persistent bar during extremely low water. No. Demonstrating the Grange's early concern for improving the Mississippi River, the state Grange convention of 1869 featured the river. The wing dams' success depended upon the main channel's volume and velocity. Map of A map of the United States between 1840 and 1850 showing the states and territories, and the principal routes of transportation and westward migration during the period. 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. 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. On the night of April 16, with Grant watching from a transport, Porters fleet of gunboats, steamers and barges successfully ran the Confederate batteries, losing only one transport to Southern fire. From this work, Warren contended that in its natural state the Mississippi River's navigation channel frequently changed and that the Corps would have to survey the river each year until they understood how it worked.29 In some reaches, Warren reported, sandbars moved in waves along the channel bottom, looking something like snowdrifts. Finally, and recognizing the emerging power of railroads, the state asserted that the river is now and ever will be and remain the great regulator and moderator of fares and freights among the rival carriers of the commerce of the west. Referring to the Civil War, the state implored Congress to recollect with what haste and facility the various railroad lines combined to increase the cost of travel, and double, and in some instances triple and quadruple, the cost of transporting the produce of the west during the late non-intercourse measures in the Lower Mississippi. The river would bind the country together again.77. Congress rejected Meeker's request and the Minnesota Legislature's petition for a land grant in support of a lock and dam in 1866. Ibid., p. 293. The bridge was completed on June 30, 1956. Sandbars posed the most persistent and frequent problem. . In other words, Congress asked the Corps to determine how to establish a continuous, 4-foot channel for the upper river at low water. Enough said. Islands created dangerous currents.13 From just below Hastings to St. Anthony Falls roughly 40 islands broke the rivers flow. Ahead of him lay the capital at Jackson, and then Vicksburg. A wave would start at the head of the reach and begin moving down, even when the current slowed. Despite the frustrations and controversies, he had assured his wife: Vicksburg will be a hard job. And the Midwest needed the South's cotton, rice, sugar, and molasses. Close to Port Gibson is Grand Gulf military park. The Senate also considered a warning from Republican President Ulysses Grant. 58, p. 5. Warren asked private companies and local interests what work they had done to improve the river's navigability. 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. The Corps of Engineers was working on a project to save the falls. Compatibility between rail lines made transshipment unnecessary. Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing . Allied with them were sawmill operators and boom company operators William W. Eastman, John Martin, Sumner W. Farnham, James A. Lovejoy, and Joel B. Bassett. But when the Father of Waters was reached, these methods were out of the question: here apparently was an insurmountable obstacle. Kane jumps to the construction of Lock and Dam 2, without discussing who made the final push for the project. 148, 151-52, 155; Schonberger, Transportation to the Seaboard, pp. 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. Snags were such frequent and treacherous hazards that steamboat pilots named them (Figure 3). His . Well aware of the agrarian unrest, he had warned the Senate that, this issue would inevitably be forced on the Exec. To steamboat pilots the natural river was too perilous, and Midwesterners feared an unreliable river might limit their region's destiny. it is destined to become the most popular region of the world, and its waters should forever be kept free and untrammelled and open to the use of every citizen within the entire navigable length, and all obstructions, whether natural or of human device, are like impediments to the prosperity of the people who till the soil of the great valley.". Before he could develop a plan for achieving the 4-foot channel, Warren had to learn more about the upper Mississippi River and he had to complete his survey. 21-22. We remotely tracked the early fall migratory movements of both juvenile and adult Savannah Sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis) that were tagged on their natal/breeding territories in southwestern Ontario, Canada, where the Motus Wildlife Tracking System has the highest density of automated . .53 Recognizing the Granger movement's growing strength and its discontent with the Republican party's failure to deal with monopolies and the farm crisis, Donnelly joined the movement in 1872. 152-53. I expect to get through it successfully however.. Native American at back of boat (detail), Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, oil on canvas, 378.5 x 647.7 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Despite Leutze's interest in history, there is little historical accuracy to be found within the painting. 259, 262; Laws of the United States, pp., 155-56; H. Exec. Studies on the migratory behavior of songbirds are important to inform full annual cycle conservation. They did so by driving two tiers of piles nine feet apart and then filling between them with willow brush and placing sacks of sand on top to weigh the brush down. In 1855 a railroad entered Galena. . In response, farmers in the Midwest and throughout the nation joined the first national farm movement, called the Grange or Patrons of Husbandry. During low water, no continuous channel existed. St. Paul recorded 41 steamboat arrivals in 1844, and 95 in 1849. U.S. Congress, House, Survey of Upper Mississippi River, 39th Congress, 2d sess., House Ex. Over the next year, the Grange founded nearly 12,000 chapters and claimed over 858,000 members. One measure of this was the number of times steamboats docked at the upper river's port cities. The Mississippi River lies entirely within the United States. When the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad was completed in 1854 under the direction of Henry Farnam and his partner Joseph Sheffield, it became the first to connect the East with the Mississippi River. The Granger Movement As railroads spread throughout the upper Mississippi River valley and the Midwest, they began monopolizing the shipping of bulk commodities, especially grain. Missouri, during the "Golden Age of Steamboats" (1830-1850). 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. pdf i74-mrc-bro.pdf (663.5 kB) Download the I-74 Mississippi River Crossings Brochure. William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, (New York:W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), p. 296, says that the first railroad to reach the Mississippi River was the Chicago, Alton and St. Louis in 1852-53. In 1854 the first two railroads reached the Mississippi River: the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad at Rock Island, Illinois, and the Chicago and Alton at Alton, Illinois. 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. Why Congress authorized two low dams, instead of one high dam that could have generated hydropower, is unknown. United States army engineers responded in 1894 by announcing plans for two locks and dams . Warren decided to deepen the upper Mississippi by dredging. 1578-79. To secure their objective, the company needed support from businessmen in Minneapolis, and for that support, Minneapolis interests won back control of the company. Sandbars determined the river's overall navigability. 30, 50-52. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Mississippi River Crossing Needs and Other Crossing Strategies. The young Daly recalled in his memoir that he could distinctly hear the grinding of her bottom on the gravel bar over which she was passing.23 Some boats ground to a halt on sandbars. 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. 58, Survey of Upper Mississippi River, p. 25. In newly constricted reaches, the channel might be good for a season or two and then become difficult again, due to the river's natural tendencies or as a result of the improvement works themselves. Having accomplished nothing as the deadline approached, the company spent $26,000 during late 1870 and early 1871. 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. In turn, the Federal army would have to march south over poor roads and await the arrival of the transports. U.S. Congress, House, Laws of the United States Relating to the Improvement of Rivers and Harbors, vol. . But City West soon declined and passed out of existence. . Popular wisdom at the beginning of the 19th century hypothesized it would take at least another 300 years, or most likely longer, to fill the area between the Mississippi and the Pacific coast. The sound grew in intensity as the mat sank lower and lower in the water.66. 1850-1899. Steamboat traffic grew quickly after 1823. St. Paul District, Corps of Engineers. 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 Confederates hammered the fleet, preventing a crossing. 58, 39th Cong., 2d sess., p. 46; Kane, St. Anthony, pp. Meeker, Kane says, retained some shares of the company for himself, as did his friends. Printed in the Minnesota Monthlys July edition, the convention's preamble to its resolutions declared: "The Mississippi River traverses for thousands of miles the noblest agricultural regions of the earth, running from North to South, . 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