Mississippi River, the longest river of North America, draining with its major tributaries an area of approximately 1.2 million square miles (3.1 million square km), or about one-eighth of the entire continent. After months of frustration, criticism and failure, Grant had executed a brilliant maneuver. So, commercial leaders in Minneapolis, supported by the State of Minnesota, sought federal support for navigation improvements in 1866. 30, 50-52. Just below this mantle lay a soft sandstone layer. To secure their objective, the company needed support from businessmen in Minneapolis, and for that support, Minneapolis interests won back control of the company. They would have to eliminate the wide shallows and sandbars and the thou- sands of little pools that Warren had once sought to preserve. Petersen, Captains, p. 235; Tweet, History of Transportation on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, pp. In early March, Grant wired General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck, I will have Vicksburg this month or fail in the attempt. He ordered operations on the Yazoo River and through Steeles Bayou, both of which ended in failure. 1780-81. Early Navigation Paddling upstream from St. Louis to St. Paul in 1823, the Virginia became the first steamboat to navigate the upper Mississippi River. 17 Oct 1872 BUTLER, Thomas *15: BRAKEMAN, Harriet (1835-1866): m'd 05 Jul 1852 WADSWORTH, Elisha . Despite the frustrations and controversies, he had assured his wife: Vicksburg will be a hard job. To steamboats, even half a foot was important. But navigating the river has never been easy, even 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. 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. Vol. Ibid. 123-24. But City West soon declined and passed out of existence. 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. 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. Historians generally agree that with the Civil War's end the federal government took a very different position on internal improvements. The four broad projects are known as the 4-, 41/2-, 6- and 9-foot channel projects. Whatever products the Midwest came to manufacture, like woolen and cotton fabrics, would find their chief market in the South and Southwest. His prices were high$8 to cross a wagon at high water, falling to $6 by early July. No. Acknowledging the obvious local appearance of its request, the state touted the projects interregional benefits. . 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. Twelve years later, in 1848, the territory became the new state of . Deep pools might run near one bank for a short reach and then jump to the other. 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. A favorable landing site on the east bank would have to be located, while other operations would be necessary to distract the Confederates. c. 1810. 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. Sandbars determined the river's overall navigability. (circa 1850) No connections to the east. During the frontier era, settlers used old animal and Indian trails, fording most streams or building crude rafts to cross larger rivers. Between 1866 and 1869, Warren completed 30 survey maps of the upper Mississippi River, at the scale of 2 inches to the mile. 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. 58, pp. The Mississippi River touches 31 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces and is one of the largest rivers in the world. . Oct 2020. Or a series of deeper pools separated by shallow sandbars could be scattered across the main channel. 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. This is the general phone line at the Mississippi River Visitor Center. Midwestern farmers sent grain to Chicago, and Chicago merchants and eastern manufacturers sent their goods back on the railroads. 84-85, 91. Annual Report 1872, p. 310. Cassville's first ferry, a 40-foot rowboat, crossed the Mississippi River in 1833. Hundreds of miles of riverbank had been secured with riprap. Then, they would move to the next troublesome reach. 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. U.S. Congress, House, Laws of the United States Relating to the Improvement of Rivers and Harbors, vol. In 1854 the Minnesota Pioneer,a St. Paul newspaper, reported that passengers and freight overflowed from every steamboat that arrived and that the present tonnage on the river is by no means sufficient to handle one-half the business of the trade.3 While two steamboats often left St. Paul each day, they could not carry goods away as quickly as merchants and farmers deposited it, and many upper river cities mirrored St. Paul.4 Each steamboat that docked created new business and a greater backlog, as more immigrants disembarked to establish farms and businesses.5, Spurred by Indian land cessions that opened much of the Midwest between 1820 and 1860, by Iowa's statehood in 1846 and Wisconsin's in 1848 and by the creation of the Minnesota Territory in 1849, passenger traffic on the upper river boomed. Enough said. Eager to begin the project, Major Francis Farquhar, the new St. Paul District commander, reported that he had initiated a survey of the river and of the dam site. When the white explorers finally reached the valley region, they also adopted the customary mode of crossing long followed by their red predecessors. 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. 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. All demanded the federal presence, the federal expertise and the federal dollars. 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. 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. 1578-79. 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. 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. Sherman once said, Grant is brave, honest, & true, but not a Genius.. 17-18. He estimated that Lock and Dam 1 would cost $568,222 and that Lock and Dam 2 would cost $598,235. 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. The Upper Mississippi, that is the Mississippi from its source to the mouth of the Missouri, drains 173,000 sq. Two of the 1850's most significant corporate developments was the original New York Central Railroad's formation on May 17, 1853 and the Erie Railroad's completion in the spring of 1851. . . A thick limestone mantle formed the riverbed. Location: Illinois, United States. In St. Louis, the Mississippi remained above flood stage for 144 days between April 1 and September 30, 1993. . In other words, Congress asked the Corps to determine how to establish a continuous, 4-foot channel for the upper river at low water. Woods, Knights, pp. The Missouri drains 528,000 sq. Kane jumps to the construction of Lock and Dam 2, without discussing who made the final push for the project. The number of islands, of course, varied with the season and the year, as many islands were temporary. U.S. Congress, House, Laws of the United States Relating to the Improvement of Rivers and Harbors, vol. The St. Paul businessmen included William E. McNair, Eugene M. Wilson, William S. King, Edward Murphy, and Isaac Atwater. Key local projects included Locks and Dams 1 (Ford Dam) and 2 (Hastings), Lower and Upper St. Anthony Falls Locks and Dams, and the little known Meeker Island Lock and Dam, which was the rivers first and shortest-lived lock and dam (Figure 2). The XV Corps commander argued that Porters gunboats and transports could not run past Vicksburgs batteries. 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. Woods, Knights of the Plow: Oliver Kelley and the Origins of the Grange in Republican Ideology, (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991), Chapters 7 and 8, supports and greatly expands on Barns' argument that Kelley actively pushed economic and political solutions and/or tacitly approved while others did so. Missouri, during the "Golden Age of Steamboats" (1830-1850). The island divided the river, and the navigation channel sometimes ran on the east side and sometimes on the west. Native Americans hunted and farmed in the Mississippi valley for hundreds of years before white men arrived. . 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. 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. FIRST RAILROADS Major General Ulysses S. Grant stood over maps searching for answers. The first European to cross the Mississippi River was Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto by boat in 1541, and then railroads crossed it in 1856. The Civil War then delayed construction of the railroad. The burdens they impose upon both consumer and producer are too grievous to be long endured.55 On March 26, 1873, responding to Windom, the Grange and the transportation crisis, the Senate directed Windoms committee to study the problem.56, On April 24, 1874, Windoms committee submitted its report to the Senate. The Vicksburg Riverfront Murals are located on the Yazoo Diversion Canal levee wall. While steamboat traffic had remained strong before the Civil War, steamboats had begun losing passengers and grain to railroads. 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. 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. 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. During the late summer or early fall, when the Mississippi usually became a shallow, slow-moving stream, the wing dams could not direct enough water down the channel to scour it. . 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. Together, the Grange, shippers and merchants, boosters in river towns and the Windom committee persuaded Congress to authorize the 41/2-foot channel project. Farmers created third parties in states throughout the country during the mid-1870s, winning significant elections and threatening the established order. I expect to get through it successfully however.. 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. Close to Port Gibson is Grand Gulf military park. . 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. And is one of the United states Relating to the Improvement of Rivers and Harbors, vol,,! 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