Photo by Brady. must break bulk and be carried in wagons to their destination. A lock and dam, the state contended, would extend navigation to its natural and proper terminus.76. 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. Annual Report, 1873, p. 411; Annual Report, 1874, p. 287. No. Military supplies and furs would dominate the much smaller steamboat trade above Galena. 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. . 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. 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. On the Mississippis west bank, Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand marched his XIII Corps and two divisions from Maj. Gen. James B. McPhersons XVII Corps south to Hard Times, La., opposite Grand Gulf, the planned crossing point. As water and ice eroded the sandstone out from underneath the limestone at the edge of the falls, the limestone broke off in large slabs, and the falls receded. He lists 99 boats counting for 965 arrivals in 1857 and 62 boats as accounting for the 1,090 arrivals in 1858. 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. Between 1866 and 1869, Warren completed 30 survey maps of the upper Mississippi River, at the scale of 2 inches to the mile. Their effort resulted in one of the most mysterious and ill-fated projects on the upper river. Examples: a dried up lake, a destroyed building, a hill leveled by mining. Between 1800 and 1860, 'at least 875,000 . The wing dams' success depended upon the main channel's volume and velocity. Merrick's father bought a warehouse on the levee from which he ran a storage and transshipping business. 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. Tributaries like the Ohio and Missouri join the journey that starts at the top and finishes at the bottom of the country. . The endeavor would be difficult and risky, requiring Rear Adm. David Dixon Porters fleet to pass by Vicksburgs heavy guns. Heretofore I have had nothing to do but fight the enemy. . Before 1906, the important problem of the arrangement was largely left to the judgment of local engineers. 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. Warren brought new hope for the project, when, in his 1867 annual report, he requested $235,665 to construct a lock and dam at Meeker Island.78 Warren engaged Franklin Cook, a former employee of the Minneapolis Mill Company, to undertake the survey. Bradley B. Meeker and Dorilus Morrison formed the Mississippi River Improvement and Manufacturing Company in 1857, with a group of Minneapolis businessmen, to develop this potential. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Opponents to the amendment included waterpower magnates William D. Washburn and Richard Chute. A movement into central Mississippi ended when Southern cavalrymen captured the Federals supply base at Holly Springs. To do this, they would have to change the Mississippi's landscape and environment. 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. Minneapolis had captured title to the head of navigation, but the low dams had eliminated St. Pauls hope for securing hydropower. Gone now, the island lay some three miles below the falls, in Minneapolis. 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. 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. They had closed nearly all the side channels. According to most estimates, the Yellowstone River measures approximately 692 miles (1,114 kilometers) long. Annual Report, 1908, pp. I could even smell the delightfully blended odor of the willows and of the creosoted marline twine with which the bundles were held together. It is a story with local and national significance. Granted, Mackenzie repeatedly called for locks and dams. Annual Report, 1875, Part 2, Vol. Citizens of the old Northwest Territory states had urged operations to clear their historic avenue of commerce. 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. To prove their point, they paid the steamer Lamartine $200 to journey from St. Paul to the cataract. 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. As Cook had worked for the Washburns, Meeker expected a negative report. 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. The charming shops of downtown Bemidji / Lisa Meyers McClintick Other Sites Along the Great River. . To further increase the water available for navigation, Congress authorized the Corps to construct six dams at the headwaters of the Mississippi, in northern Minnesota, between 1880 and 1907. . To steamboat pilots the natural river was too perilous, and Midwesterners feared an unreliable river might limit their region's destiny. . From the quarterboats you could hear the big rocks hitting each other, like a rapid-fire rage. 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. 311-12; Kane adds that during these years Meeker had sought to get the required completion date extended. pdf i74-mrc-bro.pdf (663.5 kB) Download the I-74 Mississippi River Crossings Brochure. Hillhouse reported that the Caffreys work had included 1,600 feet of wing dams. Sawmill owners also feared that they would not be able to continue dumping sawdust into the river, as it would obstruct navigation, and boom company operators did not want a dam obstructing the lumber rafts they sent downriver. The committee recommended that Congress authorize surveys and get cost estimates prepared as early as possible in order to mature a plan for the radical improvement of the river, and of all its navigable tributaries.58 The committee suggested that the Corps establish a channel of 41/2 to 6 feet for the upper Mississippi River.59 To create a channel of these depths, the committee acknowledged, would require constricting the river with wing dams and closing dams.60. And thus, Merrick recalled, we grew into the very life of the river as we grew in years.19 When old enough, Merrick began working on a steamboat as a cabin boy and after one season became a cub engineer. The lock and dam project hopelessly mired, the Corps, during its 1890 survey, evaluated removing boulders and rocks to encourage navigation.88 Major Alexander Mackenzie, the Rock Island District commander who had taken over this part of the river with the change in funding in 1888, suspected that Congress might authorize the Corps to remove the boulders in lieu of building locks and dams, even though it had authorized $25,000 to plan for a lock and dam in 1873. crossing the mississippi river in 1850 middlebury college blanket Mary Meachum Celebration The United States grew up on the water and remains a maritime nation to this day. The keynote of the meeting was a determined effort to obtain federal money for the improvement of western waterways so that they might be used as reliable routes for cheap transportation.48 Cheap transportation, delegates argued, would allow the United States to monopolize the markets of the world.49, In May 1873, cheap transportation advocates held another convention in St. Louisthe Western Congressional Convention. Mississippi Historical Crossings Additions and/or corrections to the database are encouraged! . 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. Grant Stevenson. The St. Paul businessmen included William E. McNair, Eugene M. Wilson, William S. King, Edward Murphy, and Isaac Atwater. Alberta Kirchner Hill, Out With the Fleet, Minnesota History, (1961):286. By a 4-foot channel, Congress meant a channel at least 4 feet deep if the river fell as low as it did in 1864. 310-11. Major Francis R. Shunk to Minneapolis Mayor J. C. Haynes, February 17, 1909. The Engineers were to create a permanent, continuous navigation channel, 41/2-feet deep at low-water, for the entire river between St. Paul and the mouth of the Illinois River at Alton. Droughts had the same effect, but could last an entire season. Later a New City West was built on the Chicago-Detroit road through the dunes area, but this, too, declined after the railroads came through Porter County in the early 1850's. New City West stood in the vicinity of present-day Tremont, on US 12. Raymond Merritt, Creativity, Conflict & Controversy: A History of the St. Paul District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979); Roald Tweet, A History of Rock Island District, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), pp. 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. In addition to its transport role for goods, the river acted as a conduit for the slaves' journey to the Deep South. Millers at St. Anthony were profiting from the release of water from the Headwaters Reservoirs, but Minneapolis civic and commercial boosters wanted more than milling. Havighurst, A Wilderness Saga, p. 249; Merrick, Old Times, p. 232. Porters gunboats arrived and began shelling the defenses. No general plan had been developed or implemented. You will then create a visual (posterboard, glogster, MS Word, etc.) The company needed the grant, the state contended, because the company's income from water power would be limited by the inexhaustible resources in this respect above and on the falls and because the company's state charter required it to lock boats through free.73 Anticipating opposition from the millers at St. Anthony, the state claimed that the petitions principal purpose was to bring steamboats to Minneapolis and that hydropower was incidental.74 Meeker, himself, emphasized navigation. proof Most of the trail crossed Arkansas from northeast to southwest, entering at Hix's Ferry (later Pitman's Ferry) across the The Saints left in companies and on June 14, 1846 Grandfather with 225 others arrived at the Missouri River, where a large . 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