Annual Report, 1895, pp. When the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad was completed in 1854 under the direction of Henry Farnam and his partner Joseph Sheffield, it became the first to connect the East with the Mississippi River. 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. 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. The Bridge is the Rock Island Bridge, the first railroad bridge to cross the Mississippi, built during the years 1853-1856 by a private company called the Railroad Bridge Company. Annual Report, 1875, p. 302. 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. St. Paul District records, St. Paul, Minnesota. The island divided the river, and the navigation channel sometimes ran on the east side and sometimes on the west. While the First Battle of Porto raged on March 29, 1809, thousands of civilians attempted to flee a bayonet charge by the French imperial army by crossing the Ponte das Barcas, a pontoon bridge. The first major river bridge in the St. Louis area, this railroad bridge over the Missouri River provided access to St. Charles. The river passed over the closing dams when high, but for most of the year, the dams directed water into the main channel, denying flow to the river's side channels and backwaters (Figure 10). Minnesota Highway 371 Bridge Mississippi River Bridge (La Crosse, Wisconsin) N Natchez-Vidalia Bridge Nature Road Bridge New Chain of Rocks Bridge Norbert F. Beckey Bridge North Channel Bridge Northern Pacific Bridge Number 9 Northern Pacific-BNSF Minneapolis Rail Bridge Nymore Bridge O Old Sartell Bridge Old Vicksburg Bridge .dodging reefs and hunting the best water.22 Poor hunters often fell prey to the river they hunted. . Full bridge closure 6 a.m. Monday, May 1 to 6 a.m. Monday, May 22. The river pioneers once forded with their wagons and livestock no longer existed. 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. 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 Corps simply did not have the funding, equipment, personnel or authority to make significant and permanent changes. In his next report to the Chief of Engineers, Warren stated that new surveys showed that the Corps would have to build a second lock and dam, locating it near the mouth of Minnehaha Creek, about one-half mile below Lock and Dam No. From the building boat, Alberta Kirchner recalled, . As Cook had worked for the Washburns, Meeker expected a negative report. Transportation systems have often determined the relationship of communities to the river. Wing and closing dam construction began at Pike Island at the mouth of the Minnesota River. 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). To achieve the 1/2- foot channel, the Corps had to expand upon the channel constriction experiments. In 1856, the Rock Island Railroad opened the bridge over the Mississippi River and was soon the center of controversy when the Effie Afton steamboat ran into and severely damaged the bridge. The Corps had experimented with channel constriction in 1874. The Mississippi River, the state insisted, provided the natural link. Stephanie A Sellers/Shutterstock.com. A collision involving a train at the intersection of . As canoes and steamboats drew people to the river, roads and railroads pulled them away. Two groups are studying parts of the Mississippi River with plans to build new bridges across it. 312-15, quote from p. 315; Kane, St. Anthony, p. 94. 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. Significant flooding is anticipated along the Mississippi River in the La Crosse and Winona areas through this weekend, with water levels likely to reach historic crests. 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. Doc. This act signaled a new era of internal improvements and the beginning of dramatic changes to the upper Mississippi River. Compatibility between rail lines made transshipment unnecessary. 44-45. 30, 50-52. U.S. Congress, House, Survey of Upper Mississippi River, 39th Congress, 2d sess., House Ex. The many islands dividing the river disbursed the little water available into side channels and sloughs. 14-15: the rule has been to place them, in straight reaches, five-sevenths of the proposed channel width apart; in curved reaches, one-half on the concave sides and the full width on the convex sides. All this, they believed, was part of their manifest destiny. The National Weather Service said many of the crests across the region this season will rank in the top 10 . Crossings See also List of crossings of the Upper Mississippi River List of crossings of the Ohio River List of crossings of the Arkansas River Low water was based on the rivers elevation in 1864, when a severe drought occurred. 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. While intense local issues had resulted in two dams, an equally intense national debate would lead to a new project for one. Annual Reports, 1867, pp. 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. 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. Deep was anything over three feet. Throughout his article (pp. BNSF Railway said the train derailed at about . Looking at some of the different expert estimates, it can be said that the Mississippi River is more than 2,300 miles in length. . Davenport, however, thrived and became an industrial hub and today it is one of Iowa's biggest river towns. 319-320; Kane, St. Anthony, p. 96. But the economic panic of 1857 and the Civil War ended further railroad expansion across the Mississippi. Gone now, the island lay some three miles below the falls, in Minneapolis. St. Paul recorded 41 steamboat arrivals in 1844, and 95 in 1849. Map Bridge #1 was owned by the Minneapolis, Red Lake and Manitoba Railway, one of the numerous logging railroads that operated in northern Minnesota. This is a list of bridges and other crossings of the Illinois River from the Mississippi River upstream to the confluence of the Kankakee and Des Plaines Rivers . Opponents to the amendment included waterpower magnates William D. Washburn and Richard Chute. The construction and completion of this bridge came to symbolize the larger issues affecting transcontinental commerce and sectional interests. Four bridges cross the Mississippi at Memphis: the Frisco Bridge, the Harahan, the Memphis and Arkansas, and the Hernando DeSoto. 68-74; Jane Carroll, Dams and Damages: The Ojibway, the United States, and the Mississippi Headwaters Reservoirs, Minnesota History, (Spring, 1990):4-5. 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. William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, (New York:W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), p. 296, says that the first railroad to reach the Mississippi River was the Chicago, Alton and St. Louis in 1852-53. In these reaches, Warren found that the river seems, as it were, lost, and indecisive which way to go and the pilot is scarcely able to find the line of deepest water even in daylight, and is unable to proceed at night with any confidence.31 The small pools behind the bars would play an important part in Warren's strategy for navigation improvement on the upper river. Mississippi River flooding between Lacrosse and St. Paul. They did so by driving two tiers of piles nine feet apart and then filling between them with willow brush and placing sacks of sand on top to weigh the brush down. Without enough current, this happened too slowly for navigation. Bridges (28) There are no bridges across the Mississippi River below New Orleans. . During its 1872 to 1873 session, Congress temporarily ended debate over the project, when it refused to amend the land grant.84. The works built under the 41/2-foot channel project embody these national movements and local efforts. "Although Arkansas cars could cross the Mississippi River at Memphis beginning in 1917 rather than having to drive to the . Saint Paul, Overall, Warren found that those who had been using the river evince a shrewd knowledge of the action of running water and the means of temporarily controlling it, gained by their constant experience and observation.33 Warren listened to these knowledgeable sources, but came to his own conclusions. The count in 2011 was 60,700 vehicles per day. One bridge and two cables cross the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal below the junction with the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal at New Orleans. And the Midwest needed the South's cotton, rice, sugar, and molasses. As a result, Warren favored dredging. On June 23, 1866, Congress passed the first postwar River and Harbor Act. Granted, Mackenzie repeatedly called for locks and dams. The Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River could be closed for weeks, if not longer, because of damage that could have led to "a catastrophic event.". Crossing the Mississippi River at Minneapolis, it is . 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. 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. He lists 99 boats counting for 965 arrivals in 1857 and 62 boats as accounting for the 1,090 arrivals in 1858. Navigation boosters in Minneapolis failed, however, to convince Congress of the importance of their project. Droughts had the same effect, but could last an entire season. No. So, commercial leaders in Minneapolis, supported by the State of Minnesota, sought federal support for navigation improvements in 1866. 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. 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. 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. No. Kane, Rivalry, pp. 229-42), Barns addresses three issues concerning Kelley. No. Annual Report, 1908, pp. Some opponents argued that it was the federal government's responsibility to improve the river, not private interests subsidized by the government. Snags skewered the careless and even the cautious steamboat. Behind the bar lay a deep pool of water. Rail lines were generally shorter, more direct, and could reach deep into lands served by no navigable rivers. When a series of bars came in close succession, the river could become seriously obstructed. As this requirement had proven cumbersome, the company asked Congress to modify it to allow for the sale of more sections within a single township. 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. 92-93; Kane, Rivalry, p. 312. . Pike, Sources of the Mississippi, p. 24; Keating, Narrative of an Expedition, p. 297. U.S. Congress, House, Survey of the Upper Mississippi River, Exec. The second railroad bridge to cross the Mississippi in Arkansas is Harahan Bridge, only 200 feet north of Frisco Bridge. Vol. That destiny, they believed, was to become a commercial and industrial power as strong as the East, as well as the nation's breadbasket. Petersen, Steamboating, p. 298, also recognizes the railroad at Rock Island as the first to reach the river. 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.. . As with the drive for railroad legislation, the push for waterway improvement was not just a farmers' movement. The 4 uppermost railroad bridges spanning the Mississippi were located adjacent to each other in Bemidji, Minnesota. . 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. 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. In 2022, between 40 and 100 trains crossed the bridge each day,[3]including Amtrak's Southwest Chief. Well aware of the agrarian unrest, he had warned the Senate that, this issue would inevitably be forced on the Exec. Warren asked private companies and local interests what work they had done to improve the river's navigability. No. U.S. Congress, House, Laws of the United States Relating to the Improvement of Rivers and Harbors, vol. 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. He learned that Minneapolis and St. Anthony (the community on the rivers east bank that merged with Minneapolis in 1872) had funded the removal of boulders to encourage steamboats to travel above St. Paul. Photo by Henry P. Bosse. 1:07. 341, pp. The "Big M" Hernando DeSoto Bridge, which opened in 1973, is in the news lately because a broken support beam has closed it to Interstate 40 traffic crossing high over the Mississippi River. 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). After 1847, as miners depleted the lead supply, the trade quickly declined.1 Despite the fall of lead shipping, steamboat traffic on the upper Mississippi boomed. Sandbars determined the river's overall navigability. In the mid-1800s, St. Louis was quickly losing steam (literally) to Chicago with the railroads. Enough said. Minnesota Historical Society. Doc. And, did Kelley want to make the Grange into the radical organization it became during the early 1870s, or did events force the Grange that way? They would have to alter the pattern by which sand and silt moved along the river bottom. At certain points of the outbreak, over 20 simultaneous tornado warnings were active, with a total of 175 tornado warnings issued on March 31 and an additional 51 issued on April 1. Pike took 40 strokes in his bateau and Long only 16 in his skiff.12. . From this work, Warren contended that in its natural state the Mississippi River's navigation channel frequently changed and that the Corps would have to survey the river each year until they understood how it worked.29 In some reaches, Warren reported, sandbars moved in waves along the channel bottom, looking something like snowdrifts. Below the island, no deep channel existed at low water. 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. Alberta Kirchner Hill spent 19 summers (1898-1917) with her father's fleet as they built the dams for the government. John O. Anfinson, The Secret History of the Mississippi's Earliest Locks and Dams, Minnesota History 54:6 (Summer 1995):254-67. I could even smell the delightfully blended odor of the willows and of the creosoted marline twine with which the bundles were held together. For those wanting a more immersive train ride, book your seat on the Hiwassee Loop, a 50-mile trip that takes you through the wilderness, crossing over other tracks and winding up the mountain.Its views of the Hiwassee River Gorge are exceptional in the fall, but it's still a great ride any time of year. All demanded the federal presence, the federal expertise and the federal dollars. Nora G. Hertel. From his experiences, Merrick learned much about the natural river. Demonstrating the Grange's early concern for improving the Mississippi River, the state Grange convention of 1869 featured the river. The Headwaters project provided for construction of the Winnibigoshish Dam in 1883-1884 and the completion of dams at Leech Lake (1884), Pokegama Falls (1884), Pine River (1886), Sandy Lake (1895), and Gull Lake (1912). Traveling eastbound from. More than 170 bridges (foot and railroad) span the Mississippi River on its journey from source to mouth. 318-19. There are several large cities that are near or right on the banks of the Mississippi River, and those cities tend to be accompanied by bridges that cross the river. Amtrak's Fort Madison stationis 2 miles (3.2 km) west of the bridge. Cloud) / 2nd Street North (Sauk Rapids), First Street North/East Saint Germain Street, 42nd Avenue North to 37th Avenue Northeast, Wisconsin Central Boom Island Rail Bridge, Pedestrian and Bicycle traffic North end of, Abandoned Wisconsin Central Railway over East channel connecting via former tracks on Nicollet Island to Boom Island bridge, BNSF Railway over Nicollet Island East channel, BNSF Railway over the main river channel West of Nicollet Island, First Avenue over river channel East of Nicollet Island, East Hennepin Avenue over river channel East of Nicollet Island, Hennepin Avenue over main river channel West of Nicollet Island, Merriam Street over East channel of Nicollet Island, 10th Avenue South to 6th Avenue Southeast (demolished), Former Rock Island Railroad and 66th Street East to 3rd Avenue East, Canadian Pacific Railway (Former Milwaukee Road), This page was last edited on 9 February 2023, at 19:58. Annual Report, 1890, p. 2034; Annual Report, 1892, pp. In 1873, Congress lost patience with the Mississippi River Improvement and Manufacturing Company and appropriated $25,000 for the Corps to begin the project.85 But Congress required the state to return the land grant before the Corps could start. The best market for the Midwest's corn, flour, pork, and beef, it claimed, was the South. Why Congress authorized two low dams, instead of one high dam that could have generated hydropower, is unknown. 2, 10, 22, 46. In August 1870, Kelley left Minnesota by steamboat for St. Louis to secure direct trade arrangements between Minnesota and Missouri. There are two locks.93 Minneapolis had somehow won the debate over building one or two dams. Hill, Out With the Fleet, p. 291.
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