how many railroad bridges cross the mississippi 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.. And Congress had authorized, that year, a sixth dam for the Headwaters, the one at Gull Lake. For purposes of the study, it was assumed that each of the highway corridor alternatives should also be considered as rail corridor alternatives at the outset. 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. They divided the upper Mississippi into a series of deep pools separated by wide shallows that sometimes stranded even the lightest steamboats. Looking at some of the different expert estimates, it can be said that the Mississippi River is more than 2,300 miles in length. 29-30; Frederic L. Paxson, Railroads of the Old Northwest, before the Civil War, Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters 17 (1914):257-60, 269-71. . At Rock Island in 1856, the Chicago and Rock Island became the first railroad to cross the Mississippi. Nate [Nathan] Daly, Tracks and Trails: Incidents in the Life of a Minnesota Pioneer, (Walker, Minnesota: Cass County Pioneer, 1931), p. 18. Barns credits Kelley with founding the Grange, recognizing the role of others, particularly of Miss Carrie Hall, Kelley's niece. St. Paul and Minneapolis pushed especially hard. After the war, he settled in New York. Construction crews will work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Woods, Knights, pp. Between 1866 and 1869, three more railroads crossed the river to Iowa, and by 1877, thirteen railroad bridges spanned the upper river (Figure 5).40 Railroads greatly increased the countrys ability to move commodities, and, yet, railroads would provoke and inflame a shipping crisis. 84-85, 91. And the Midwest needed the South's cotton, rice, sugar, and molasses. 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. As Cook had worked for the Washburns, Meeker expected a negative report. 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). as the mat went down under the load . 109, pp. Warren had recommended that Congress fund a survey of the upper Mississippi River's headwaters and tributaries in his 1869 report. Two groups are studying parts of the Mississippi River with plans to build new bridges across it. St. Paul suffered a double setback. 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 . Extending navigation above St. Anthony Falls with the other two locks and dams would total $1,538,702.90. 309-10. 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. 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. Another wave soon followed. 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. Doc. It did so twice that year. The 4 uppermost railroad bridges spanning the Mississippi were located adjacent to each other in Bemidji, Minnesota. The Mississippi River gave birth to most cities along its banks, and those cities did all they could to ensure that the river would nurture their growth. As steamboats evolved and as the region's population and production grew, the river's limitations as a navigation route would become unacceptable and Midwesterners would repeatedly call for its improvement as a commercial artery. 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. But in 1862, he left the river to fight in the Civil War. By authorizing the 41/2-foot channel project, Congress directed the Corps to remake the upper Mississippi. 0:03. 58, p. 5. Allied with them were sawmill operators and boom company operators William W. Eastman, John Martin, Sumner W. Farnham, James A. Lovejoy, and Joel B. Bassett. With Warren's arrival in St. Paul in August, the Corps established a permanent stake in how the upper Mississippi River would be managed and changed. After reviewing various proposals, the committee recommended that Congress regulate some railroad operations and that it authorize an intense program of waterway improvements. B etween Iowa and Illinois, spanning a stretch of the Mississippi River that flows from east to west, sits an exhausted 55-year-old concrete bridge. 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. He does not provide a location for this work and there is no mention of it in later reports, however. . In other words, Congress asked the Corps to determine how to establish a continuous, 4-foot channel for the upper river at low water. During his trip, he fed the St. Paul Pioneer Press articles condemning railroads and the Chicago Board of Trade and promoting waterway improvement. Petersen, Captains, p. 235; Tweet, History of Transportation on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, pp. Ibid. 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. No. From Minneapolis' perspective, the channel improvement works on the upper Mississippi River only benefitted its principal rivalSt. 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. 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. But in the not-too-distant future, it may carry bison. It drew national Senators and Representatives from 22 states and the governors of Minnesota, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, and Virginia. Alberta Kirchner Hill spent 19 summers (1898-1917) with her father's fleet as they built the dams for the government. In response, farmers in the Midwest and throughout the nation joined the first national farm movement, called the Grange or Patrons of Husbandry. So, commercial leaders in Minneapolis, supported by the State of Minnesota, sought federal support for navigation improvements in 1866. To steamboats, even half a foot was important. Bridges (28) There are no bridges across the Mississippi River below New Orleans. The Corps had experimented with channel constriction in 1874. The Mississippi River bridges range from 40 to 117 years in age. Enough said. It was named after its designer and builder, James Buchanan Eads. Pike, Sources of the Mississippi, p. 24; Keating, Narrative of an Expedition, p. 297. Roads, railroads, bridges and highways and the corridor's economic development are inseparably tied. Some opponents argued that it was the federal government's responsibility to improve the river, not private interests subsidized by the government. Doc. 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. From the Open Air platform of an Observation Car, cross the Milwaukee Road, Now Canadian Pacific, bridge that crosses the Mississippi River at La Crosse Wisconsin. Lucile M. Kane, Rivalry for a River: the Twin Cities and the Mississippi, Minnesota History 37:8 (December 1961):309-23. How many bridges across the Mississippi River? Full bridge closure 6 a.m. Monday, May 1 to 6 a.m. Monday, May 22. In October 1858, the G&CU directors proposed leasing a railroad bridge from Fulton, IL, to Lyons, IA, that was to be built by an independent company strictly controlled by the G&CU The CI&N, however, made known its intention to bridge the Mississippito the considerable displeasure of the G&CU. Doc. Annual Report 1872, p. 310. Opened October 22, 2016, Big River Crossing is the longest public pedestrian/bike bridge across the Mississippi River, providing dramatic views of its ever-changing landscape. However, Paxson, whom he cites, shows that the railroad completed tracks from Alton to Springfield, Illinois, in 1852, and then from Springfield to Chicago, via a roundabout route, in 1853, but did not have the line in operation until 1854. Between 1823 and 1847, most boats carried lead and worked around Galena, Illinois. At Dibbles Point, the shoreline had eroded 15 to 20 feet in one year due to a wing dam built at Prescott Island, near Prescott.67 To protect shores from naturally eroding or from being undercut by the constricted channel, the Corps protected hundreds of miles of shoreline with brush mats and rock. Ibid., p. 243; The Select Committee recommended a depth of 5 feet at low water for St. Paul to St. Louis. Few boats plied the river above Galena. The density of channel constriction works and the degree to which they physically and ecologically changed the river increased gradually over the project's history. In his report for the 1871 season, Captain Wm. To secure their objective, the company needed support from businessmen in Minneapolis, and for that support, Minneapolis interests won back control of the company. What was the first bridge across the Mississippi River? 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. 3 Bridges cross the Mississippi River in Mississippi: Greenville,Vicksburgh, Natchez are the only 3 bridges that cross the Mississippi River in Mississippi. Annual Reports, 1867, pp. Thebes in 2010 1682-83; U.S. Congress, Senate, Construction of Locks and Dams in the Mississippi River, 53d Cong., 2d sess., Exec. The MRL&M was abandoned in 1938. 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). The Mississippi River lies entirely within the United States. Navigation boosters in Minneapolis failed, however, to convince Congress of the importance of their project. (Figure 1). 310-11. Before he could develop a plan for achieving the 4-foot channel, Warren had to learn more about the upper Mississippi River and he had to complete his survey. Between 1866 and 1869, three more railroads crossed the river to Iowa, and by 1877, thirteen railroad bridges spanned the upper . Frank Haigh Dixon, A Traffic History of the Mississippi River System, National Waterways Commission, Document 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. Doc. 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. Railroads have got enough for the present. Portending the coming conflict with Minneapolis, St. Paul citizens criticized the project, as it would steal from them their valuable position as the head of navigation. 7-8. A newly completed lock and dam and another one under construction promised to make Minneapolis the head of navigation. Due to the collapse of this tunnel, St. Anthony Falls was in danger of eroding away. 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. Boats requiring an opening may not pass. Grangers sought to control railroad rates through state and federal regulation and through improved navigation on the nation's rivers. 1; see U.S. Congress, House, Survey of the Upper Mississippi River, Exec. Mississippi River flooding between Lacrosse and St. Paul. 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. That destiny, they believed, was to become a commercial and industrial power as strong as the East, as well as the nation's breadbasket. 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. The Senate also considered a warning from Republican President Ulysses Grant. Annual Report, 1895, pp. All this, they believed, was part of their manifest destiny. Connected with this matter is a secret history, upon which I proceed as discreetly as may be to cast a little light. For such a large river, the Mississippi has a relatively low flow. There is the city of St. Paul, and there is the city of Minneapolis. 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. The Corps simply did not have the funding, equipment, personnel or authority to make significant and permanent changes. The bridge is privately owned by BNSF Railwayand is the river crossing for the Southern Transcon, BNSF's Chicago-Southern California main line. The sound grew in intensity as the mat sank lower and lower in the water.66. Between 1866 and 1869, Warren completed 30 survey maps of the upper Mississippi River, at the scale of 2 inches to the mile. Without a lock and dam, the river above St. Paul was too narrow, too shallow, too strewn with boulders and the current too fast for steamboat navigation.34 To create a safe and continuous 4-foot channel for the river between St. Paul and the Rock Island Rapids, Warren asked for $96,000 to acquire and operate two dredge and snag boats, $5,000 to construct an experimental closing dam at Prescott Island, about 26 miles below St. Paul, and $5,000 for another experimental closing dam for the Wacouta chute near Red Wing, Minnesota.35.