. 1578-79. Enough said. Without enough current, this happened too slowly for navigation. La Crosse, Wisconsin, joined these cities, becoming the terminus of the Milwaukee and La Crosse in 1858. Doc. Annual Report, 1881, p. 2746. St. Paul District records, St. Paul, Minnesota. 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. 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. He estimated that Lock and Dam 1 would cost $568,222 and that Lock and Dam 2 would cost $598,235. St. Louis merchants were among the Mississippi River's greatest advocates. With river traffic failing and railroads monopolizing the regions transportation, many farmers and business interests believed they were facing a shipping crisis. He moved on to represent Minnesota in the U.S. House for 6 years as a Republican. Crossing the river was essential from the outset. In the South, although there were migrations to Mississippi and Louisiana, many more people went to Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. When a series of bars came in close succession, the river could become seriously obstructed. 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 river, stretching from the headwaters down to the Twin Cities, was not used by barge traffic. Frederic Paxson, American Frontier, 1763-1893, (Chicago: The Riverside Press, 1924), p. 517. The Caffrey may have done some work with closing dams earlier. He questioned the value of removing boulders, believing that the steep grade and rapid current required locks and dams. Farmers created third parties in states throughout the country during the mid-1870s, winning significant elections and threatening the established order. 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. Major Francis R. Shunk to Minneapolis Mayor J. C. Haynes, February 17, 1909. . And the Midwest needed the South's cotton, rice, sugar, and molasses. Minnesota's population jumped from 6,077 to 172,023, Iowa's from 192,000 to 674,913, Wisconsin's from 305,391 to 775,881 and Illinois' from 851,470 to 1,711,951.9 Passenger traffic became so important to the steamboat trade that by 1850 passenger receipts exceeded freight receipts.10, Before 1866, during the heyday of steamboats, the upper Mississippi River still possessed most of its natural character. 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. Quick Description: A covered wagon on a 1840s wooden ferry at the Mississippi River crossing; the beginning of the Mormon Pioneer Trail in Nauvoo, Illinois. In 1976, repairs were made to the west abutment and four piers on the west side of the bridge. 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, . Kane, Rivalry, pp. No. . For months he had studied them, conferred with subordinates, undertaken personal reconnaissances and endured failures. Donald B. Dodd and Wynelle S. Dodd, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1790-1970. A bad bar could sever St. Pauls and Hastings connection with St. Louis, the Gulf of Mexico and the world.14 Normally, during the late summer or early fall, the river began falling and would enter the stage steamboat pilots and Corps engineers called low water. Snags could, in an instant, impale a steamboat or tear it apart.11 The natural river became surprisingly narrow in places. AP US History (Sem 1) | Lesson 4.2 Assignment: Antebellum Reformers Project Directions: For this assignment you will choose a major reformer from the Antebellum era (1815-1861) and conduct independent research. Instead of going to St. Louis or New Orleans, a steamboat from St. Paul might unload at La Crosse or Rock Island or at other railheads, and increasingly, most river commerce became local.41, While the river had been hauling grain since the birth of Midwestern agriculture, railroads held too many advantages over the undeveloped waterways. Annual Report, 1875, Part 2, Vol. 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. 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. Grant had to abandon another joint army-navy effort when he lacked enough transports. So, commercial leaders in Minneapolis, supported by the State of Minnesota, sought federal support for navigation improvements in 1866. Vol. It had been nearly two years since Confederate forces had closed the Mississippi River to Union shipping. A thick limestone mantle formed the riverbed. 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. Focusing on navigation, the Minnesota Legislature, in 1866, petitioned Congress to authorize navigation improvements above St. Paul and requested the land grant on behalf of Meeker's company. . Rail lines were generally shorter, more direct, and could reach deep into lands served by no navigable rivers. . 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. Mississippi was given title to more than three million acres of swamp and overflow land along its northwestern border with the Mississippi River. The existing Rock River bridges include three federal, one state, and one local crossings. . 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. . m., over which the annual rainfall averages 34.7 in., and its discharge per second into the Lower Mississippi varies from 25,000 cub. But when the Father of Waters was reached, these methods were out of the question: here apparently was an insurmountable obstacle. 148, 151-52, 155; Schonberger, Transportation to the Seaboard, pp. Historians generally agree that with the Civil War's end the federal government took a very different position on internal improvements. Petersen, Captains, p. 235; Tweet, History of Transportation on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, pp. . 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. All this, they believed, was part of their manifest destiny. While steamboat traffic had remained strong before the Civil War, steamboats had begun losing passengers and grain to railroads. Lock and Dam 2 (the Meeker Island Lock and Dam) could then be placed about 2.9 miles upstream, below Meeker Island, and would have a lift of 13.8 feet. They needed local navigation projects, but these did little good without a navigable river downstream. Port Gibson, MS. is a small town that played a part in the Civil War. 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 . Flood waters had started to recede, but remained . 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. They also raised funds during the 1850s to remove boulders and other obstacles.69 Recognizing that the river's challenges required more than these futile measures, navigation boosters began discussing a lock and dam for the river above St. Paul as early as 1852. Between 1866 and 1869, Warren completed 30 survey maps of the upper Mississippi River, at the scale of 2 inches to the mile. Lester Shippee, Steamboating on the Upper Mississippi after the Civil War: A Mississippi Magnate, Mississippi Valley Historical Review 6:4 (March 1920):496; Dixon, A Traffic History, p. 49; Hartsough, Canoe, pp. Not even a severe t-storm watch was issued. A newly completed lock and dam and another one under construction promised to make Minneapolis the head of navigation. After months of frustration, criticism and failure, Grant had executed a brilliant maneuver. ix-xix, 3-30; Robert S. Salisbury, William Windom, Apostle of Positive Government, (New York: University Press of America, 1993), pp. The inland and intercoastal waterways, with the Upper Mississippi highlighted in red. Annual Report, 1872, pp. p. 213. 58, pp. No. It is a story with local and national significance. The focus of Corps work between 1878 and 1906, the 41/2-foot channel became the first system-wide, intensive navigation improvement project for the upper Mississippi River. They had closed nearly all the side channels. The Confederates hammered the fleet, preventing a crossing. First, did Kelley get the idea for the Grange on his trip through the South? 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. As the river fell, each wave formed a bar that acted like a small dam. 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 . Many just mention herds of Government cattle, but one, for 305 head in June of 1863, specifically mentions Texas cattle. The solution, they insisted, lay in improving the nation's waterways, especially the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The first railroad bridge across the Mississippi was open for business. 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. The first ferries crossing from Piggott's complex to St. Louis were pirogues, small boats similar to canoes, made from hollowed out logs. This map shows the completion dates at various points along the route westward from Chicago. 16 The folklore that people once waded across the Mississippi is true. In 1872, Captain J. Throckmorton argued that while wing dams would probably not work for the upper river, closing dams would. Under steam power, people and goods could be transported upstream far more quickly and in greater numbers and quantities than on boats with sails or oars or poles. 259, 262; Laws of the United States, pp., 155-56; H. Exec. . Extending navigation above St. Anthony Falls with the other two locks and dams would total $1,538,702.90. Those that swayed back and forth with the current they called sawyers. . In its petition, the state stressed that boats had frequently landed within two and one-half miles of downtown Minneapolis, up until 1857. Petersen, Steamboating, p. 298, also recognizes the railroad at Rock Island as the first to reach the river. Artist: Thompson Ritchie. Twelve years later, in 1848, the territory became the new state of . . 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. As more settlers arrived in the late 1770s and early 1800s, however, the need for more reliable ways to cross rivers became evident. While Grant continued planning and waited for the roads to dry out, he kept the troops at work digging a canal. 11, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), pp. This measurement takes into account the full mainstem of the river. Together, the Grange, shippers and merchants, boosters in river towns and the Windom committee persuaded Congress to authorize the 41/2-foot channel project. 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. Her father, Albert Kirchner, along with Jacob Richtman, both from Fountain City, Wisconsin, became the leading contractors for the Corps in wing dam construction. . Acknowledging the obvious local appearance of its request, the state touted the projects interregional benefits. Ibid., p. 293. U.S. Congress, House, Survey of the Upper Mississippi River, Exec. These slight dams, Warren commented, had been somewhat successful, indicating a way of deepening the low-water channel worthy of special attention. But these measures had been only temporary; high water usually swept the dams away. Merritt, Creativity, p. 141, says that When it appeared that the Mississippi River Improvement and Manufacturing Company would not be able to resolve its internal conflicts, Congress decided to give the project over to the Corps of Engineers. Neither author discusses who pushed Congress to authorize the project. 55101. 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. 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. Many trees fell into the water to become snags. Of specific note is the intersection where the Three-Chopped Way intersected with the . 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