Grant had to abandon another joint army-navy effort when he lacked enough transports. 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. Her father, Albert Kirchner, along with Jacob Richtman, both from Fountain City, Wisconsin, became the leading contractors for the Corps in wing dam construction. . In other words, Congress asked the Corps to determine how to establish a continuous, 4-foot channel for the upper river at low water. No. 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. In 1855 a railroad entered Galena. U.S. Congress, House, Survey of the Upper Mississippi River, Exec. As the state failed to return it, the Corps did not begin work. Many passengers came from the East; others came from Europe, fleeing famine in Ireland and political unrest on the continent. It would alter the navigable portion of the river through the MNRRA corridor dramatically. 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). Sandbars determined the river's controlling depththe minimum depth for navigation at low water. United States army engineers responded in 1894 by announcing plans for two locks and dams . . 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). Formed in 1868 by Oliver Hudson Kelley, a Minnesota farmer who had moved to Washington, D.C., to work as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture, the Grange had established nearly 1,400 chapters in 25 states by 1873 (Figure 6).44 The number of chapters multiplied to more than 10,000 by the end of the year. Not only could the steamboat haul freight, but it had comfortable accommodations for passengers. . And Congress had authorized, that year, a sixth dam for the Headwaters, the one at Gull Lake. 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. But it held little chance of success and was eventually abandoned. Warren asked private companies and local interests what work they had done to improve the river's navigability. The desire to improve navigation on the upper river affected the river above the Twin Cities, as well. Three of those nightmaresthe sandbars at Prescott, Grey Cloud, and Pig's Eyereceived special note in Merricks history. In this act, Congress directed the Corps to extend navigation to the Washington Avenue Bridge by constructing Lock and Dam 2.91 While it did not mention Lock and Dam 1, Congress called for improving the river from near the mouth of the Minnesota River to the Washington Avenue Bridge, indicating that another lock and dam would be built below Meeker Island. 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. From their pioneer days on, they insisted that the federal government should improve the river for navigation. . American Memory Project, Library of Congress. Rivers proved to be an unfailing source of trouble. 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. In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson sent a young army Lieutenant, Zebulon Pike, into the area to find a suitable site to build a military outpost. From 1850 to 1870, it delivered supplies and furs on two-wheeled carts between St. Paul, Minnesota and the frontier. The Twin Cities had to see that the entire Mississippi River was remade. This map displays the three land-based migration routes from the Carolinas and eastern Georgia to the newly opened lands of southern Mississippi. Merrick, Old Times, p. 162, says that From 1852 to 1857 there were not boats enough to carry the people who were flocking into the newly-opened farmers' and lumbermans' paradise.. On June 23, 1866, Congress passed the first postwar River and Harbor Act. Over the next year, the Grange founded nearly 12,000 chapters and claimed over 858,000 members. Annual Report, 1873, p. 411; Annual Report, 1874, p. 287. 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. Many trees fell into the water to become snags. He questioned the value of removing boulders, believing that the steep grade and rapid current required locks and dams. No general plan had been developed or implemented. 84-85, 91. Due to the collapse of this tunnel, St. Anthony Falls was in danger of eroding away. . Anfinson, Secret History, Minnesota History 54:6 (Summer 1995):254-67. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. . Kane jumps to the construction of Lock and Dam 2, without discussing who made the final push for the project. Not even a severe t-storm watch was issued. Merritt, Creativity, 140; Lucile M. Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built Minneapolis, (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987), pp. U.S. Congress, House, Survey of Upper Mississippi River, 39th Congress, 2d sess., House Ex. The first bridge to cross the river here, the Eads Bridge, was completed in 1874 and is still used today. 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. David A. Lanegran and Anne Mosher-Sheridan, The European Settlement of the Upper Mississippi River Valley: Cairo, Illinois, to Lake Itasca, Minnesota1540 to 1860, in John S. Wozniak ed., Historic Lifestyles in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, (New York: University Press of America, 1983), pp. 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. Annual Report, 1908, pp. Some steamboats might land only once, while others returned many times. 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. By authorizing the 41/2-foot channel project, Congress directed the Corps to remake the upper Mississippi. Crossing the Mighty Mississippi River From La to Ms highway 82 1850-1899. Major Francis R. Shunk to Minneapolis Mayor J. C. Haynes, February 17, 1909. After reviewing various proposals, the committee recommended that Congress regulate some railroad operations and that it authorize an intense program of waterway improvements. After charging men under him to undertake the tributary surveys, Warren began the upper Mississippi survey from the Rock Island Rapids to Minneapolis himself. Minneapolis had captured title to the head of navigation, but the low dams had eliminated St. Pauls hope for securing hydropower. Mackenzie added that the Corps would have to build a third lock and dam with a 10.1-foot lift to bring navigation to St. Anthony Falls and a fourth lock to bring navigation above it. [and] suggested that the Congress study the problem and find a solution. Windom, Select Committee, p. 7; Schonberger, Transportation to the Seaboard, p. 29. In his memoirs Grant wrote of that signal achievement: When this was effected, I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equaled since.I was on dry ground on the same side of the river with the enemy. 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. 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). We remotely tracked the early fall migratory movements of both juvenile and adult Savannah Sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis) that were tagged on their natal/breeding territories in southwestern Ontario, Canada, where the Motus Wildlife Tracking System has the highest density of automated . as the mat went down under the load . Major General Ulysses S. Grant stood over maps searching for answers. Minnesota's population jumped from 6,077 to 172,023, Iowa's from 192,000 to 674,913, Wisconsin's from 305,391 to 775,881 and Illinois' from 851,470 to 1,711,951.9 Passenger traffic became so important to the steamboat trade that by 1850 passenger receipts exceeded freight receipts.10, Before 1866, during the heyday of steamboats, the upper Mississippi River still possessed most of its natural character. . 1; see U.S. Congress, House, Survey of the Upper Mississippi River, Exec. At Lock and Dam 1, the Engineers had begun constructing the lock.92 Few, if any, spectators watching the Itura paddle through Lock 2 imagined that the new facility would be destroyed within 5 years. Ibid., p. 293. The sound grew in intensity as the mat sank lower and lower in the water.66. As the experiments with closing dams had shown, cutting off the side channels greatly increased the main channel's flow. In 1836, the ferry carried a 23-year-old New Yorker named Nelson Dewey across the river. Finley's 1827 State Map of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Direct communication, they pleaded, is both natural and necessary, and the all-beneficent Creator has graciously anticipated the wants and necessities of unborn millions in having given us exactly such a continuous means of supply and exchange from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico. The petition even cited editorials from the St. Paul papers stressing the importance of Minneapolis to the region's economy. In 1872, Captain J. Throckmorton argued that while wing dams would probably not work for the upper river, closing dams would. In his report for the 1871 season, Captain Wm. Sherman once said, Grant is brave, honest, & true, but not a Genius.. Lock and Dam 2 (the Meeker Island Lock and Dam) could then be placed about 2.9 miles upstream, below Meeker Island, and would have a lift of 13.8 feet. Lucile M. Kane, Rivalry for a River: the Twin Cities and the Mississippi, Minnesota History 37:8 (December 1961):309-23. In 1880, however, it finally authorized an experimental dam for Lake Winnibigoshish and authorized the remaining dams shortly afterwards. 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 . 111 E. Kellogg Blvd., Suite 105 1, 62nd Cong., 3d sess., Doc. Congress initially balked at the projects pork-barrel appearance. However, for the enslaved in the country years ago, the river represented something worlds away from oppression. That while wing dams would probably not work for the Headwaters, the Corps not... ):254-67 affected the river 's controlling depththe minimum depth for navigation low... Paul, Minnesota History 37:8 ( December 1961 ):309-23, Captain Wm authorized an dam! Nightmaresthe sandbars at Prescott, Grey Cloud, and Pig 's Eyereceived special note in Merricks History for Lake and! 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