The project would permanently reshape the river between Lock and Dam 1 (the Ford Dam) and St. Anthony Falls. Tributaries like the Ohio and Missouri join the journey that starts at the top and finishes at the bottom of the country. 40-42; William D. Barns, Oliver Hudson Kelley and the Genesis of the Grange: A Reappraisal, Agricultural History 41 (July 1967):229-30. Over the next year, the Grange founded nearly 12,000 chapters and claimed over 858,000 members. 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). Nick is crossing the Mississippi for the first time, and feels the crossing will be "a big event". The crossing back into Mississippi appears to have taken a physical toll on the animal. In December 1872, he had introduced a resolution to address the transportation problem. . No. At 692 miles, the Yellowstone River ranks . It came to me strongly every time the men hoisted a swishing bundle of brush to their gunny-sack-protected shoulders. Besides preserving the Mississippi's birthplace, Itasca State Park anchors the headwaters region that includes the 88-mile Lake Country Scenic Byway linking the towns of Park Rapids, Detroit Lakes and Walker. U.S. Army, Corps of Engineers, Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers,1872, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876-1940), p. 309. They would build as many wing dams, close as many side channels, and protect as much shoreline as needed to establish a 41/2-foot channel. Then, they would move to the next troublesome reach. An interview with historian Richard M. McMurry on his 2023 book, The Civil Wars of General Joseph E. Johnston, Confederate States Army.. Lying at the head of navigation, they demanded a river capable of delivering the immigrants needed to populate the land (not considering that they had taken it from Native Americans) and the tools and provisions needed to fully use it. 17 Oct 1872 BUTLER, Thomas *15: BRAKEMAN, Harriet (1835-1866): m'd 05 Jul 1852 WADSWORTH, Elisha . 1; see U.S. Congress, House, Survey of the Upper Mississippi River, Exec. A 1903-1905 Corps navigation map shows the river ribbed with wing dams and closing dams and lined with hundreds of miles of riprap. Deep pools might run near one bank for a short reach and then jump to the other. The Twin Cities had to see that the entire Mississippi River was remade. In 1892, Mackenzie again insisted that only locks and dams could regularly entice steamboats above Meeker Island; any other efforts, he charged, wasted time and money.89, Signaling a possible break, the Chief of Engineers, on February 15, 1893, directed Mackenzie to prepare new and exact estimates for locks and dams for this portion of the river . After months of frustration, criticism and failure, Grant had executed a brilliant maneuver. In doing so, they would contribute to the drive for navigation improvement at the same time they were throttling shipping on the river. The Mississippi River touches 31 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces and is one of the largest rivers in the world. 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. Reeling from Chicago's increasing dominance over the region's trade, they saw the river as their best counteroffensive. FIRST RAILROADS 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. James Piggott, a late eighteenth century pioneer, settled in Cahokia and established a ferry operation, providing passage to St. Louis for travelers on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. On June 23, 1866, Congress passed the first postwar River and Harbor Act. Merrick, Old Times, p. 100; Havighurst, A Wilderness Saga, p. 158, says that early steamboating was a triumph of men more than machines, and, p. 159, that piloting was not so much a trade as a miracle.. Twenty-seven river miles downstream, at Hastings, they recorded a rise of about one foot and at Red Wing about one-half foot. No. A movement into central Mississippi ended when Southern cavalrymen captured the Federals supply base at Holly Springs. Mississippi was given title to more than three million acres of swamp and overflow land along its northwestern border with the Mississippi River. Crossing the Mighty Mississippi River From La to Ms highway 82 341, p. 14; Annual Report, 1879, p. 111, see figures 1, 2, and 3 and Plate 3. 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. The Engineers or their contractors placed the rock and brush in layers until a dam rose above the water surface to a level that would guarantee a minimum 41/2-foot channel (Figure 9).64. During its 1872 to 1873 session, Congress temporarily ended debate over the project, when it refused to amend the land grant.84. 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. 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. Rock Island District, Corps of Engineers, Railroad Monopolies The Midwests need to receive and send out goods grew as rapidly as its population and agricultural production. While still in his twenties, Donnelly had become Minnesota's lieutenant governor. Enough said. 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. The Missouri drains 528,000 sq. Twice during December 1862, Grant ordered thrusts against the city from the north. Doc. . From the St. Croix to the Illinois River it varied from 18 to 24 inches.15 A few miles below St. Paul, the river sometimes became so shallow that boats would have to stop within sight of the city.16 The folklore that people once waded across the Mississippi is true. Between 1866 and 1869, Warren completed 30 survey maps of the upper Mississippi River, at the scale of 2 inches to the mile. 92-93; Kane, Rivalry, p. 312. 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. As steamboats evolved and as the region's population and production grew, the river's limitations as a navigation route would become unacceptable and Midwesterners would repeatedly call for its improvement as a commercial artery. Crossing the river was essential from the outset. . Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing . Nevertheless, Farquhar optimistically asked for $300,000 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1876.86 Disagreement over the grant and haggling over land for the project, including the purchase of Meeker Island, however, would delay the project for nearly 20 more years.87 St. Paul remained the head of navigation, and the Corps focused its efforts downstream. 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. 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. From their pioneer days on, they insisted that the federal government should improve the river for navigation. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. 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. 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. Or a series of deeper pools separated by shallow sandbars could be scattered across the main channel. He estimated that Lock and Dam 1 would cost $568,222 and that Lock and Dam 2 would cost $598,235. 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. On the Mississippi's west bank, Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand marched his XIII Corps and two divisions from Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson's XVII Corps south to Hard Times, La., opposite Grand Gulf, the planned crossing point. 23-25; Tweet, A History of the Rock Island District, U.S. Army, Corps of Engineers, 1866-1983, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), p. 39; William J. Petersen, Steamboating on the Upper Mississippi, (Iowa City: The State Historical Society of Iowa, 1968), pp. In 1862, Nathan Daly, the son of a Minnesota pioneer family fleeing from the Dakota Conflict in Minnesota, recounts the effect bars could have on a steamboat's hull. . 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. St. John the Baptist Parish (SJBP, French: Paroisse de Saint-Jean-Baptiste) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana.At the 2020 census, the population was 42,477. From his experiences, Merrick learned much about the natural river. 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. He moved on to represent Minnesota in the U.S. House for 6 years as a Republican. 30, 50-52. 319-320; Kane, St. Anthony, p. 96. Windom's hometown, Winona, lay on the Mississippi River in southeastern Minnesota.51 Windom first became a senator when Republican Daniel S. Norton died in office in 1870 and Minnesota's governor appointed Windom to fill the seat. Harold B. Schonberger, Transportation to the Seaboard: The Communication Revolution and American Foreign Policy, 1860-1900, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971), p. 21. Upstream from Vicksburg, the river bent north in a broad loop before turning south again, forming a peninsula opposite the city. ix-xix, 3-30; Robert S. Salisbury, William Windom, Apostle of Positive Government, (New York: University Press of America, 1993), pp. It flows south at a speed of 1.2 miles per hour to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico and forms the second largest drainage system in North America after the Hudson Bay. The seizure of the mighty stream had been a major component of Federal strategy since the wars earliest weeks. Low water was based on the rivers elevation in 1864, when a severe drought occurred. Due to the milling operations at the falls, the cataract was in danger of deteriorating into a series of rapids. 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. Alberta Kirchner Hill, Out With the Fleet, Minnesota History, (1961):286. I expect to get through it successfully however.. 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. The Confederates hammered the fleet, preventing a crossing. To steamboats, even half a foot was important. Porter's gunboats arrived and began shelling the defenses. Forward thinking entrepreneurs and politicians pushed for the development of such a railroad and in May 1869 the final spike of the Transcontinental Railroad was driven in Promontory Point in Utah. After charging men under him to undertake the tributary surveys, Warren began the upper Mississippi survey from the Rock Island Rapids to Minneapolis himself. 259, 262; Laws of the United States, pp., 155-56; H. Exec. 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. 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. A newly completed lock and dam and another one under construction promised to make Minneapolis the head of navigation. 17-18. Below Red Wing, water from the reservoirs had little effect.68. Ibid., p. 293. .dodging reefs and hunting the best water.22 Poor hunters often fell prey to the river they hunted. Behind the bar lay a deep pool of water. Railroads, more than the river, would meet the regions need, but not without a price, a price much too high for some. In 1876, he returned to Wisconsin to becomefittinglya railway agent. 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 . United States army engineers responded in 1894 by announcing plans for two locks and dams . It drew national Senators and Representatives from 22 states and the governors of Minnesota, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, and Virginia. . But, less than one month later, the steamboat Effie Afton ran into the wooden structure, sinking the boat and heavily damaging the railway bridge (see pic below). Hill, Out With the Fleet, p. 291. . A significant historical month for this entry is October 1885. Bridgehunter.com | Ferry | Page 2 David Garlick and Elizabeth Buck (Found on the Internet . 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