While the river naturally eroded its banks, closing dams and wing dams accelerated erosion by increasing the channel's velocity and volume. However, Paxson, whom he cites, shows that the railroad completed tracks from Alton to Springfield, Illinois, in 1852, and then from Springfield to Chicago, via a roundabout route, in 1853, but did not have the line in operation until 1854. as part of a portfolio of multi-value projects approved by the midcontinent independent system operator, this river crossing is 1.56 miles (2.51 km) long, connects the maywood substation in missouri and the herleman substation in illinois, and is part of the illinois rivers transmission project 385 miles (620 km) of transmission from palmyra, 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. . . Artist: Thompson Ritchie. On April 22, 1856, the citizens of Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, cheered as they watched three steam locomotives pull eight passenger cars safely across the newly completed Chicago and Rock Island railroad bridge over the Mississippi River. For months he had studied them, conferred with subordinates, undertaken personal reconnaissances and endured failures. To prove their point, they paid the steamer Lamartine $200 to journey from St. Paul to the cataract. His figures for arrivals differ slightly from those of Dixon in Table 2.1. Islands created dangerous currents.13 From just below Hastings to St. Anthony Falls roughly 40 islands broke the rivers flow. In 1880, however, it finally authorized an experimental dam for Lake Winnibigoshish and authorized the remaining dams shortly afterwards. From the quarterboats you could hear the big rocks hitting each other, like a rapid-fire rage. Citizens of the old Northwest Territory states had urged operations to clear their historic avenue of commerce. Historians generally agree that with the Civil War's end the federal government took a very different position on internal improvements. Lock and Dam 1 would have to be placed above Minnehaha Creek and have a lift of 13.3 feet. 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. Sandbars determined the river's overall navigability. Below Red Wing, water from the reservoirs had little effect.68. The XV Corps commander argued that Porters gunboats and transports could not run past Vicksburgs batteries. 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. Frederic Paxson, American Frontier, 1763-1893, (Chicago: The Riverside Press, 1924), p. 517. 2103-04; Annual Report, 1869, p. 237; Annual Report, 1901, p. 2309; Raymond H. Merritt, The Corps, the Environment, and the Upper Mississippi River Basin, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), p. 1; Merritt, Creativity, pp. Doc. . After charging men under him to undertake the tributary surveys, Warren began the upper Mississippi survey from the Rock Island Rapids to Minneapolis himself. . 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. Droughts had the same effect, but could last an entire season. St. Paul District, Corps of Engineers. Cassville's first ferry, a 40-foot rowboat, crossed the Mississippi River in 1833. 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. Ibid., pp. He moved on to represent Minnesota in the U.S. House for 6 years as a Republican. No. . . By dividing the river, islands limited the water available to the navigation channel and thereby its depth. Gone now, the island lay some three miles below the falls, in Minneapolis. Cadwallader C. Washburn and his brother William D., the Minneapolis Mill Company's owners and two of the city's most powerful and prominent millers, adamantly opposed locks and dams. To create a 4-foot channel and deal with the Rock Island and Des Moines Rapids, the Corps established its first offices on the upper Mississippi River: one at St. Paul and one at Keokuk, Iowa (the latter would be moved to Rock Island in 1869).28 On July 31, 1866, A. Behind the bar lay a deep pool of water. The conference organizers' goal was to impress upon these key political officials the depth of the shipping crisis. In 1876, he returned to Wisconsin to becomefittinglya railway agent. While still in his twenties, Donnelly had become Minnesota's lieutenant governor. Mississippi was given title to more than three million acres of swamp and overflow land along its northwestern border with the Mississippi River. No. 58, p. 5. While railroads could send many cars in both directions with full cargoes, barges delivering their commodities at St. Louis or New Orleans or points in between too often returned empty.43. In his report for the 1871 season, Captain Wm. 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. As it had learned more about the upper Mississippi River, the Corps had recognized the futility of keeping the river navigable by dredging.61 In 1874, when the Montana could not dredge due to high water, the Engineers refitted it with a pile driver and went to Pig's Eye Island, five miles below St. Paul (Figure 8). In 1872, Captain J. Throckmorton argued that while wing dams would probably not work for the upper river, closing dams would. Sandbars posed the most persistent and frequent problem. He describes the immense river as a "solid, shifting lake," a rather perfect description. Born in Niles, Michigan, on the St. Joseph River, Merrick watched steamboats go back and forth between South Bend, Indiana, and the town of St. Joseph on Lake Michigan.17 When Merrick was 12 years old, his family left Michigan and traveled to Rock Island, Illinois. . Wings should be pointed upstream at the following angles: 105N to 110N, in straight reaches, 100N to 102N in concave, 90N to 100N in convex, and they should be so located where practicable, that their axes prolonged would meet in the center of the channel. Edward L. Pross, A History of Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Bills, 1866-1933, Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1938, p. 44. Those that swayed back and forth with the current they called sawyers. At its headwaters, the water exceeds 12,800 feet above sea level, while its lowest point measures 1,850 feet above sea level. But in 1862, he left the river to fight in the Civil War. "This was like a day after he crossed the river. 15T E 635413 N 4489267. . Port Gibson has a nice little downtown area and town square which features the Claiborne County courthouse. . The total cost of the bridge was $6.8 million (City of Clinton Bridge Commission 1956:2). In August 1870, Kelley left Minnesota by steamboat for St. Louis to secure direct trade arrangements between Minnesota and Missouri. (Figure 1). The first bridge to cross the river here, the Eads Bridge, was completed in 1874 and is still used today. The Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroads were the first railroads to be built in Iowa reaching Rock Island, Illinois, in August 1854 and connecting with Iowa by a ferry crossing the Mississippi River. 58, pp. Snags skewered the careless and even the cautious steamboat. 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. The river pioneers once forded with their wagons and livestock no longer existed. The wing dams' success depended upon the main channel's volume and velocity. 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. To get off, pilots sometimes used spars, long wood poles on which the front and back of the boats would be alternately jacked up and pushed forward. The Missouri drains 528,000 sq. First, the "Stars and Stripes" flag . .dodging reefs and hunting the best water.22 Poor hunters often fell prey to the river they hunted. Marker is on Levee Street north of Clay Street, on the left when traveling north. It came at the insistence of the states, farmers, business interests and the general public. 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. By narrowing the river and thereby increasing the main channel's velocity, the Corps hoped to scour one uninterrupted navigation channel the length of the upper river.63 Wing dams, closing dams and shore protection required two simple components: willow saplings and rock. 32 21.065 N, 90 53.032 W. Marker is in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in Warren County. During its 1872 to 1873 session, Congress temporarily ended debate over the project, when it refused to amend the land grant.84. Railroad trackage in the United States multiplied from 30,635 miles in 1860, to 52,914 in 1870, and 92,296 in 1880.39 Before the Civil War, only the Rock Island Railroad had bridged the upper Mississippi River from Illinois to Iowa. . The fourth longest river in the world goes through or forms the border of 10 states. Warren had recommended that Congress fund a survey of the upper Mississippi River's headwaters and tributaries in his 1869 report. Hundreds of wing dams and closing dams studded the rivers banks from St. Paul to St. Louis. The U.S. Army established a post at the bridge in 1855, when tension was mounting between emigrants and Native Americans. Crossing the Mighty Mississippi River From La to Ms highway 82 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. No. The dangers of navigating the natural river were so great, he said, that pilots had to memorize every bluff, hill, rock, tree, stump, house, woodpile, and whatever else is to be noted along the banks of the river.21 And pilots, he added, learned The artistic quality in handling of a boat under the usual conditionsin making the multitudinous crossings, . 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.. Millers at St. Anthony Falls especially pushed for reservoirs above the falls. H. Doc. m., over which the annual rainfall averages 34.7 in., and its discharge per second into the Lower Mississippi varies from 25,000 cub. Early railheads on the upper river's east bank fostered steamboat traffic, but they initiated its end as well. Jul 1850 LYMAN, Joseph S.; m2. Three of those nightmaresthe sandbars at Prescott, Grey Cloud, and Pig's Eyereceived special note in Merricks history. 310-11. A newly completed lock and dam and another one under construction promised to make Minneapolis the head of navigation. In 1869, a tunnel from the toe of the falls to Nicollet Island collapsed just below the island. Planters were those that became lodged in the river's bottom, and sleepers hid beneath the water's surface. St. Paul District records, St. Paul, Minnesota. As the river fell, each wave formed a bar that acted like a small dam. After reviewing various proposals, the committee recommended that Congress regulate some railroad operations and that it authorize an intense program of waterway improvements. He questioned the value of removing boulders, believing that the steep grade and rapid current required locks and dams. Annual Report, 1890, p. 2034; Annual Report, 1892, pp. Anfinson, Secret History, Minnesota History 54:6 (Summer 1995):254-67. , Despite the growing menace of the railroads, river traffic remained strong.38. Kelley and Grangers in the upper Mississippi River valley saw the river as an essential route to domestic and foreign markets. Sherman once said, Grant is brave, honest, & true, but not a Genius.. . No sooner had a barge of rocks been pulled up to the dam, Hill remembered, than the symmetry of the load was destroyed as the men began the routine of sinking the mat. Twice during December 1862, Grant ordered thrusts against the city from the north. 92-93; Kane, Rivalry, pp. 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. As a result, Warren favored dredging. Thomas A. p. 213. 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. By 1857, St. Paul had become a bustling port, with over 1,000 steamboat arrivals each year by some 62 to 99 boats.2, As rapidly as the number of steamboats increased, they could not keep pace with demand. On June 23, 1866, Congress passed the first postwar River and Harbor Act. The existing Rock River bridges include three federal, one state, and one local crossings. In 1855 a railroad entered Galena. Trains ran when the river was high or low; they ran when the cold of winter froze it; for the most part, they ran throughout the year.42 Those railroads that ran east to westmost importantly to Chicagotook advantage of complementary markets. Photo by Henry P. Bosse. 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. Doc. Navigation boosters in Minneapolis failed, however, to convince Congress of the importance of their project. Early Navigation Paddling upstream from St. Louis to St. Paul in 1823, the Virginia became the first steamboat to navigate the upper Mississippi River. Railroads moved their freight quicker, giving their users greater flexibility in responding to market changes. Close to Port Gibson is Grand Gulf military park. Before 1906, the important problem of the arrangement was largely left to the judgment of local engineers. Another in September 1862 mentions 720 cattle crossed at Natchez and . 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. U.S. Congress, House, Survey of Upper Mississippi River, Letter from the Secretary of War in answer to a resolution of the House, of December 20, 1866, transmitting report of the Chief of Engineers, with General Warrens report of the surveys of the Upper Mississippi river and its tributaries, 39th Congress, 2d Session, Ex. 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. That destiny, they believed, was to become a commercial and industrial power as strong as the East, as well as the nation's breadbasket. Twenty-seven river miles downstream, at Hastings, they recorded a rise of about one foot and at Red Wing about one-half foot. Without a lock and dam, the river above St. Paul was too narrow, too shallow, too strewn with boulders and the current too fast for steamboat navigation.34 To create a safe and continuous 4-foot channel for the river between St. Paul and the Rock Island Rapids, Warren asked for $96,000 to acquire and operate two dredge and snag boats, $5,000 to construct an experimental closing dam at Prescott Island, about 26 miles below St. Paul, and $5,000 for another experimental closing dam for the Wacouta chute near Red Wing, Minnesota.35. 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. There are two locks.93 Minneapolis had somehow won the debate over building one or two dams. On the night of May 21, 1855, in the area that is now part of the Mississippi Greenway: Riverfront Trail north of the Merchant's Bridge, Mary Meachum attempted to help a small group of enslaved people cross the Mississippi River to Illinois where slavery was outlawed. Some opponents argued that it was the federal government's responsibility to improve the river, not private interests subsidized by the government. The small streams were crossed by fording; the larger ones by swimming the teams, wagons and all. Walter Havighurst, Upper Mississippi, A Wilderness Saga, (New York: Farrar & Rinehart; New York: J. J. This is the general phone line at the Mississippi River Visitor Center. After the war, he settled in New York. Construction of the five-and-a-half-mile, six-lane bridge cost fifty-seven million dollars. In this way, pilots hoped to walk their boat over the bar. Congress, however, would soon authorize new projects for the upper Mississippi River that would make this impossible. The family lived in the upper two stories, George sharing the attic with his brother.18 From there the boys could see and hear every steamboat that stopped at or passed the levee. It served the Indians as a means of crossing long before the whites penetrated as far west as the Mississippi. To achieve the 1/2- foot channel, the Corps had to expand upon the channel constriction experiments. Enough said. Five dams at the Headwaters stored the winters snow, holding it for the summer and fall, when the millers at St. Anthony and the steamboats below would need it. At Guttenberg, Iowa, an island split the river into two channels, one passing in front of the city and the other running along the Wisconsin side. To fulfill that destiny, they would help transform the entire upper Mississippi River and make the reach between Hastings and St. Anthony Falls one of the rivers most engineered. 206-09, 209, 246; William J. Petersen, Captains and Cargoes of Early Upper Mississippi Steamboats, Wisconsin Magazine of History 13 (1929_30):227-32; Mildred Hartsough, From Canoe to Steel Barge, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1934), pp. 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.". No. FIRST RAILROADS branch, . Meeker, Kane says, retained some shares of the company for himself, as did his friends. . On April 30, Porters gunboats passed Grand Gulfs guns and began ferrying McClernands infantry and artillery across the river. 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. As the state failed to return it, the Corps did not begin work. Sandbars determined the river's controlling depththe minimum depth for navigation at low water. The Senate also considered a warning from Republican President Ulysses Grant. Havighurst, A Wilderness Saga, p. 249; Merrick, Old Times, p. 232. But in 1868, he quarreled with Minnesota's senior Republican leader, Alexander Ramsey, and failed to get reelected. . Heretofore I have had nothing to do but fight the enemy. 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. 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, . Major General Ulysses S. Grant stood over maps searching for answers. . Playing on the desire of Minneapolis navigation boosters, they proposed building a lock and dam between the two cities to aid navigation and to secure the hydropower for themselves.71, Meeker, a territorial judge and local entrepreneur, and Morrison, a St. Anthony Falls sawmill operator, lobbied for and obtained permission from the Minnesota Territorial Legislature to build their lock and dam near Meeker Island. Location: Illinois, United States. 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. .65 Once the willow mats had been laid in the water, the workers would sink them with rock. Of specific note is the intersection where the Three-Chopped Way intersected with the . Porter's gunboats arrived and began shelling the defenses. Kane, St. Anthony, p. 175, says Deprived of the navigation facilities they coveted, persuasive Minneapolitans continued to urge the federal government to act. 58, 39th Cong., 2d sess., p. 46; Kane, St. Anthony, pp. 196-97, 199; Tweet, History of Transportation, 38-39. Because some of the bridges across the river may be under construction, unofficial, small or in disrepair, the exact number of bridges that cross the Mississippi River is difficult to pin down to a single precise number; however, it can be said that there are at least 130 bridges that cross the Mississippi River. (circa 1850) No connections to the east. Kane, Rivalry, pp. Subsequently he turned to newspaper editing and publishing.20 On June 7, 1868, the Minneapolis Daily Tribune claimed that the Meeker Island lock and dam would transfer the commercial prestige of this upper country from St. Paul to the Magnet.80 St. Paul industrial boosters also claimed victory. . In 1836, the ferry carried a 23-year-old New Yorker named Nelson Dewey across the river. . He would become one of the Senate's strongest advocates for railroad regulation and navigation improvement.52, The rapidly growing strength of the Granger movement in Minnesota and the threat of railroad monopolies spurred Windom to address the transportation issue with zeal. 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 miller's fear, he said, "is another waterpower that might result incidentally from our effort to get Boats to the Falls of St. Anthony.75, Minneapolis navigation boosters clearly saw that Meeker's project would extend navigation above St. Paul, which was their primary reason for supporting it. In addition to its transport role for goods, the river acted as a conduit for the slaves' journey to the Deep South. From St. Paul to the St. Croix River, the controlling depth at low water was 16 inches. 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 . Hillhouse reported that the Caffreys work had included 1,600 feet of wing dams. Bridgehunter.com | Ferry | Page 2 David Garlick and Elizabeth Buck (Found on the Internet . The St. Paul District commander, Major Francis R. Shunk, tried to explain the matter to Minneapolis Mayor J. C. Haynes on February 17, 1909. 1682-83; U.S. Congress, Senate, Construction of Locks and Dams in the Mississippi River, 53d Cong., 2d sess., Exec.