310-11. Ibid. . At its headwaters, the water exceeds 12,800 feet above sea level, while its lowest point measures 1,850 feet above sea level. They would have to alter the pattern by which sand and silt moved along the river bottom. Warren decided to deepen the upper Mississippi by dredging. In 1880, however, it finally authorized an experimental dam for Lake Winnibigoshish and authorized the remaining dams shortly afterwards. Annual Report, 1873, p. 411; Annual Report, 1874, p. 287. Ahead of him lay the capital at Jackson, and then Vicksburg. Alberta Kirchner Hill spent 19 summers (1898-1917) with her father's fleet as they built the dams for the government. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Her father, Albert Kirchner, along with Jacob Richtman, both from Fountain City, Wisconsin, became the leading contractors for the Corps in wing dam construction. Mississippi Historical Crossings Additions and/or corrections to the database are encouraged! 58, 39th Cong., 2d sess., p. 46; Kane, St. Anthony, pp. Kane, Rivalry, pp. Sherman once said, Grant is brave, honest, & true, but not a Genius.. 16 The folklore that people once waded across the Mississippi is true. To secure their objective, the company needed support from businessmen in Minneapolis, and for that support, Minneapolis interests won back control of the company. Those that swayed back and forth with the current they called sawyers. The Granger Movement As railroads spread throughout the upper Mississippi River valley and the Midwest, they began monopolizing the shipping of bulk commodities, especially grain. 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. 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. While steamboat traffic had remained strong before the Civil War, steamboats had begun losing passengers and grain to railroads. 341, p. 14; Annual Report, 1879, p. 111, see figures 1, 2, and 3 and Plate 3. But, as a result of the economic panic beginning that year, a number of unprecedented droughts and the Civil War, navigation, they brashly claimed, had receded some sixteen miles, to St. Paul, where all the freight destined to these cities, (Minneapolis and St. Anthony) and the vast regions north and west . Thompson gives a rule which is better adapted to the present project (the 6-foot channel), in which he places the dams in straight reaches the full channel width apart, increasing the space 25 per cent on the convex side and diminishing it 25 per cent on the concave side, depending on the degree of curvature. 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. A. Humphreys, the Chief of Engineers, ordered Brevet Major General and Major of Engineers Gouverneur K. Warren to St. Paul to begin the Corps' work on the upper Mississippi River (Figure 4). By the fall of 1906 the Engineers had completed most of Lock and Dam 2, and on May 19, 1907, the Itura became the first steamboat to pass through the lock (Figure 11). Washington Crossing the Delaware By Emanuel Leutze Beautiful Detailed Print . He questioned the value of removing boulders, believing that the steep grade and rapid current required locks and dams. .53 Recognizing the Granger movement's growing strength and its discontent with the Republican party's failure to deal with monopolies and the farm crisis, Donnelly joined the movement in 1872. Roald Tweet, History of Transportation on the Upper Mississippi & Illinois Rivers, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 21-22; Petersen, Captains and Cargoes, 228, 234-38; Hartsough, Canoe, 74-75. 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. Kane, St. Anthony, p. 96, points out that the state never transferred the grant to the company. The fourth longest river in the world goes through or forms the border of 10 states. From Minneapolis' perspective, the channel improvement works on the upper Mississippi River only benefitted its principal rivalSt. 1850-1899. .dodging reefs and hunting the best water.22 Poor hunters often fell prey to the river they hunted. While mining Fold3 today, I ran across the Citizens Records of John McKay. St. Paul District records, St. Paul, Minnesota. From St. Anthony Falls to downtown St. Paul, some 15 river miles, the river falls more than 100 feet. . 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. It had been nearly two years since Confederate forces had closed the Mississippi River to Union shipping. Flood waters had started to recede, but remained . 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. Deep pools might run near one bank for a short reach and then jump to the other. . Doc. 44-45. St. Paul and Minneapolis pushed especially hard. . The first ferries crossing from Piggott's complex to St. Louis were pirogues, small boats similar to canoes, made from hollowed out logs. 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. To prove their point, they paid the steamer Lamartine $200 to journey from St. Paul to the cataract. The Missouri drains 528,000 sq. 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. It did, however, authorize the Corps of Engineers to survey the reach between Fort Snelling and St. Anthony Falls, along with its general survey of the upper Mississippi River. Kane, St. Anthony, p. 175, says Deprived of the navigation facilities they coveted, persuasive Minneapolitans continued to urge the federal government to act. At 692 miles, the Yellowstone River ranks . By 1857, St. Paul had become a bustling port, with over 1,000 steamboat arrivals each year by some 62 to 99 boats.2, As rapidly as the number of steamboats increased, they could not keep pace with demand. The Mississippi River Route was first explored by canoes, quickly followed by paddle boats, in a seemingly endless . St. Paul District, Corps of Engineers. If lucky, they avoided hogging the boat; that is, warping or breaking its hull.24. Blegen, Minnesota, A History of the State, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975, 1963), p. 290. Wing and closing dam construction began at Pike Island at the mouth of the Minnesota River. Sandbars determined the river's overall navigability. But it held little chance of success and was eventually abandoned. . 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. George Byron Merrick captures well the perils of sailing the natural river. His prices were high$8 to cross a wagon at high water, falling to $6 by early July. 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. 7-8. No. It came at the insistence of the states, farmers, business interests and the general public. . 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. 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 . . Photo by Brady. Those that bowed in and out of the water they labeled preachers. But in 1868, he quarreled with Minnesota's senior Republican leader, Alexander Ramsey, and failed to get reelected. 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. Merrick's father bought a warehouse on the levee from which he ran a storage and transshipping business. . When a series of bars came in close succession, the river could become seriously obstructed. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators . But when the Father of Waters was reached, these methods were out of the question: here apparently was an insurmountable obstacle. While railroads could send many cars in both directions with full cargoes, barges delivering their commodities at St. Louis or New Orleans or points in between too often returned empty.43. 68-74; Jane Carroll, Dams and Damages: The Ojibway, the United States, and the Mississippi Headwaters Reservoirs, Minnesota History, (Spring, 1990):4-5. 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. Lucile M. Kane, Rivalry for a River: the Twin Cities and the Mississippi, Minnesota History 37:8 (December 1961):309-23. Annual Report, 1881, p. 2746. Annual Report, 1890, p. 2034; Annual Report, 1892, pp. Woods, Knights, pp. 11, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), pp. The St. Paul businessmen included William E. McNair, Eugene M. Wilson, William S. King, Edward Murphy, and Isaac Atwater. After months of frustration, criticism and failure, Grant had executed a brilliant maneuver. Not even a severe t-storm watch was issued. Windom's hometown, Winona, lay on the Mississippi River in southeastern Minnesota.51 Windom first became a senator when Republican Daniel S. 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