by Julie Cutler
Great Blue Heron on the Mississippi: Sixty percent of all North American birds migrate along the Mississippi River’s flyway. Photo by Matthew Schillerberg, Trailheads Photography
For a river pilot in 1860, to know the Great Mississippi River was to navigate through as-yet uncharted waters. The knowledge necessary to guide a steamer safely through and around reefs, bars, snags, and sunken wrecks was the knowledge of every curve, bend, bluff, knob, and treetop in light and dark, upstream and downstream. It was the time before dams directed water in a permanent channel and before beacons and buoys marked a safe passageway.
In George Byron Merrick’s account of steamboat pilots on the Mississippi River in the middle of the 1800s, he said, “To ‘know the river’ fully, the pilot must not only know everything which may be seen by the eye, but he must also feel for a great deal of information of the first importance which is not revealed to the eye alone.” A mental chart of the river allowed pilots to run the river as they knew it to be—not as they could see it—and they did this in an environment that was inherently in flux.
Steamboat pilot at the wheel, 1912. Photo courtesy John Runk, Minnesota Historical Society
This type of river knowledge comes from profound, deep, and direct experience on the river—experience that makes one part of the river and its story. Today, there are still people with this deep and abiding knowledge of the river who understand both the stories that they can see emerging on the banks of the Mississippi River and those that they intuit from their connections to a river layered with history and shaped by human ingenuity. These are people anchored in and oriented by the river.
For me, the Great River is more like a force I continue to be drawn back to again and again. I was born on the banks of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. Thus, my life started where the river, laden with traces of people and places far upstream, mixes with the sea to form a broad, ever-changing delta. Perhaps that is why my understanding of the Mississippi River is as a vital whole where all things change, mix together, and in one way or another connect.
Today, I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota, which is closer to the headwaters where the Mighty Mississippi takes root. From where I write, less than a quarter of a mile from the Mississippi, I can see its ebb and flow, watch the changing seasons marked by migration, and examine the decks of passing barges heralded by low, resonant chords. I am one of the few, fortunate people who can claim to reside within a national park. The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA) just turned 20 years old. It was established by Congress in 1988 as part of the National Park System to protect, preserve, and enhance the Mississippi River—its natural features, cultural heritage, historical resources, scenic vistas, recreational opportunities, and economic vitality.
Located within the Twin Cities metropolitan area, MNRRA includes 72 miles of river, three National Historic Landmarks, as well as numerous other historic sites and natural features of national significance.
“MNRRA is a unique national park,” said Superintendent Paul Labovitz, “because we are a partnership park. Many national parks depend on people coming to them. At MNRRA, we go to people; thus, our park doesn’t look like a traditional national park with entrance gates and extensive facilities. Instead, MNRRA is a constellation of partner sites that are knit together by the river.”
Through its partners, its own programs at a range of locations along the river, and its modest visitor center located in the Science Museum of Minnesota in downtown Saint Paul, MNRAA tells the story of the Mississippi River.
America’s Great River
The Mississippi River is America’s river, and its story is as much a story of people as it is a story of nature. Even simple statistics reveal why the Mississippi River has been coined America’s Great River. It stretches some 2,350 miles from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico and gathers water from America’s heartland, or about 40 percent of the continental United States. More than 50 U.S. cities, or about 18 million people, get their drinking water from the Mississippi River each day.
Leopard frogs, bald eagles, Blanding’s turtles, ducks, deer, river otters, foxes, sparrows, and much more find shelter and food in the river’s floodplain forests, wetlands, prairies, oak savannas, and woodlands. All told, more than 900 species of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, and mussels call the Mississippi River basin home, and 60 percent of all North American birds fly along its ancient migratory route up and down the globe’s longest flyway.
Layered with History
Captain Seth Eastman of the First Infantry stationed at Fort Snelling from 1841 to 1848 captured the Mississippi River landscape of the time through his watercolors. He spent time with the Ojibwe and Dakota, learned to speak their languages, and observed their customs. Through this interaction, Eastman left a visual record of the confluence in the middle of the 19th century. Photo courtesy Seth Eastman, Minnesota Historical Society
The Mississippi River resonates through time. According to David Wiggins, MNRRA park ranger, “Even the word ‘Mississippi’ harkens from ancient roots. It is an Algonquin word used by the Ojibwe to mean, ‘father of waters, or great waters.’”
Archeologists have been able to trace people along the upper Mississippi for at least 12,000 years, which is about the time of the last glacial retreat, when the glacial Lake Agassiz drained down the River Warren to create the “father of waters.”
About 11,000 years ago, a massive waterfall formed near what is now downtown Saint Paul. At the time, the waterfall would have outshone Niagara Falls. Water from glacial Lake Agassiz cascaded 175 feet from top to bottom, and the falls spanned some 2,700 feet across. Over thousands of years, the falls retreated through soft limestone up the river to what is now downtown Minneapolis and in so doing carved the only gorge along the entire length of the river. The waterfall that remains today is known as Saint Anthony Falls.
The first written account of Saint Anthony Falls came from a Frenchman, Father Louis Hennepin, in 1680. Though Spanish explorers had traveled up the Mississippi River prior to 1600, the French were the first Europeans to establish long-lasting trade with local populations through the fur trade industry. When Hennepin and his companions explored the upper Mississippi around 1680 in search of the fabled Northwest Passage, several different Native American groups occupied the area, some having been dislocated from their ancestral lands in the east by Europeans. At the time of French contact, the Eastern or Santee Dakota inhabited much of Minnesota. The Santee included the Mdewakanton, Wahpeton, Wahkepute, and Sisseton. Together these people came to be known by the French as the “Sioux.”
Fort Snelling was built at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers in the early 1820s. Today, it is a National Historic Landmark. Photo by Matthew Schillerberg, Trailheads Photography
By the middle of the 1700s, the Ojibwe had pushed the Dakota, or Sioux, away from the headwaters of the Mississippi in northern Minnesota toward the plains of what is now North Dakota and south into the Mississippi River valley below Saint Anthony Falls to the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Minnesota River, where the Dakota were already present in smaller numbers. For the Dakota, the confluence is a place of importance. The Dakota call the confluence “B’dote.”
In 1851, the Dakota Friend reported on the Dakota’s understanding of “B’dote.” According to the newspaper, “One of the great natural facts is that the mouth of the Minnesota River lies immediately over the center of the earth and under the center of the heavens.” Thus, even today the Dakota understand the confluence to be the center of all things.
They weren’t the only ones who understood the importance of this confluence. In the early 1800s, this portion of the Mississippi River became a fur trading center. After the signing of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States established sovereignty over lands extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. The American Fur Company was founded in 1811 and rapidly established trading posts around the upper Midwest to compete with established French and British fur trading operations in the region.
While the French and English had been exploring the upper Mississippi River for more than a century, the area was only fully documented following surveying expeditions led by American explorers and sponsored by the U.S. military. In 1805, Zebulon Pike explored portions of the Mississippi River and began negotiating with the Dakota for land to build a fort at the confluence. From 1820 to 1824, the U.S. military constructed a fort at the confluence, in part, to regulate and secure the fur trade for American companies. The fort was named for Colonel Josiah Snelling, who oversaw its construction. Fort Snelling rapidly became the center of American culture and power in the area, a major trading point, and the western edge of the new American nation.
By the 1830s, an ever-growing number of American missionaries, entrepreneurs, farmers, and settlers were coming to the area. At the same time, fur trading operations had depleted the region’s game and fur resources. This did not bode well for the Dakota, who eventually would be forced to leave the confluence. In 1851, high above the confluence on Pilot Knob, the Dakota signed the Treaty of Mendota, giving up their lands west of the Mississippi River and south along the Minnesota River. Eleven years later, after the 1862 Dakota Conflict, the government imprisoned some 1,700 Dakota men, women, and children in the bottomlands below Fort Snelling at the confluence. Today, Fort Snelling is a National Historic Landmark.
Shaped by Human Ingenuity
As the head of navigation on the Mississippi River, Saint Paul had become a bustling port by the middle of the 19th century. Immigrants disembarked, merchants and farmers deposited goods for transport, and people set off by land for points north and west of Saint Paul. As for Minneapolis’s riverfront, it too was an industrious place in the mid to late 1800s. By the end of the 19th century, the people of Minneapolis had created the country’s greatest direct-drive waterpower industrial district. Saint Anthony Falls was instrumental in the development of Minneapolis because it first furnished direct power to the lumber industry and later the flour industry, both of which stimulated the development of the new city. By the late 1800s, Minneapolis was the nation’s leading flour milling center. Names such as Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, and Gold Medal Flour came to be along the Mississippi.
Completed in 1881, the Pillsbury A Mill was the world’s largest flour mill for 40 years and operated two of the most powerful direct-drive waterwheels ever built. Today, it is a National Historic Landmark. Image courtesy Minnesota Historical Society
Before 1866, during the heyday of Mississippi River steamers, the river still possessed most of its natural characteristics. However, it wasn’t long before the river was transformed from a natural river to a navigable commercial artery, and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul were instrumental in this transformation.
“Lying at the head of navigation on the river, the Twin Cities had to see that the entire Mississippi River was remade,” said MNRRA historian. “They needed the river to deliver new immigrants and the tools and provisions necessary to populate the land, and they demanded a navigable river so they could deliver the bounty of their labor to the rest of the country and the world.”
Over the next 100 years, the upper Mississippi River would be dramatically transformed into a great stairway of water from Minneapolis to Saint Louis through four projects authorized by Congress and carried out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. These projects are known as the 4-, 4.5-, 6-, and 9-foot channel projects. These projects deepened the upper Mississippi one by one. The 1930 River and Harbor Act that authorized the 9-foot channel not only transformed the Mississippi into a navigable channel but also further established the Midwest as the world’s breadbasket.
The vast farmlands of the Midwest produced wheat, durum, flax, rye, oats, and barley. Railroads competed with Mississippi River barges, and it was this competition that ultimately drove the transformation of the river into a navigable channel. Construction of the Panama Canal in 1914 meant that crops and other Midwestern products could be transported down the Great River to even more international markets. This, along with the Twin Cities’ growth as an industrial and agricultural center, served as great motivation for changes to the river. Today, more than 10 million tons of cargo pass through locks and dams in the MNRRA corridor annually.
Viewed from Today
For nearly a century, the Mississippi River was valued mostly for its ability to create and sustain economic growth and our nation’s development. Cities and towns grew up on its banks. We used its waters and we tamed its rapids. Our story is intertwined with the Great River. It has shaped our nation in ways beyond those we could imagine when, as a newly formed country, we sent explorers to understand the farthest reaches of the river and the people who called it home.
Upper Saint Anthony Falls Lock and Dam, Stone Arch Bridge, and Minneapolis west-side mill district. Photo by Matthew Schillerberg, Trailheads Photography
Now we must ask, what will the 21st century mean for the Mississippi River? How will innovation in our generation shape America’s Great River in important ways?
History bears out the story of the use, and sometimes abuse, of the river’s economic capital. Perhaps as we write the story of the Mississippi River in the 21st century, it will be a story about the restorative capacity of the river and a generation’s action to maximize the economic, environmental, and community benefits of the river. MNRRA is uniquely positioned to interpret the power of the Mississippi River, thereby fostering community vision, engagement, and stewardship, and they are doing just that.
In the MNRRA corridor, the National Park Service is partnered with the Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, which is the University of Minnesota’s world-renowned research center now making great strides in understanding and improving the river’s water quality; the Friends of the Mississippi River, which is preserving and restoring the river through land conservation, watershed protection, and river corridor stewardship; Great River Greening, which leads community-based restoration of natural and open spaces through native plantings, exotic species removal, prairie seed collection and sowing, and prescribed burns; the Saint Paul Riverfront Development Corporation, which is committed to redeveloping Saint Paul as a river-oriented community that balances the interdependence of economic, community, and environmental issues along the Mississippi; the University of Minnesota’s Telling River Stories Project, which is collecting the stories of urban riverfronts along the Mississippi River and the people in these river communities; the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, which is a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center developing transformative management practices for ecosystems, resources, and land use; and numerous city, county, regional, and state agencies that plan, design, operate, and maintain the MNRRA corridor.
The Global Great River Partnership is also a project of MNRRA to collaborate with the University of Minnesota, the Science Museum of Minnesota, the National Science Foundation, and many other organizations to model how multiple organizations and stakeholders can work together to manage the Mississippi River based on the best scientific and economic models that recognize the value of natural and cultural resources. The Global Great River Partnership will share its knowledge with partners who manage other major rivers of the world, particularly those in densely populated areas.
This type of profound, deep, and direct experience on the river is a bit different from that of a river pilot in the 1860s, but it is as critical now as it was at any other time in history. As we seek to make connections to each other and to the river, we can see the stories that are emerging on the banks of the Mississippi River. What are you doing to orient yourself toward America’s Great River and anchor yourself in its future?
Julie Cutler, CIP, is a senior interpretive planner with the 106 Group, a cultural resources management, interpretive planning, and exhibit development firm located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She lives along the Mississippi River in the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area.
