Mississippi River
From Wikinfo
The Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States. The longest is the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi River. Taken together, they form the largest river system in North America, an aulacogen of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. If measured from the head of the Missouri, the length of the Missouri/Mississippi combination is approximately 3,895 miles (6,270 km) long.
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Geography
With its source Lake Itasca, in Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota, it is joined by the Missouri and Meramec River at Saint Louis, and by the Ohio at Cairo, Illinois. The Mississippi drains most of the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains, except for the area drained by the Great Lakes.
The Mississippi runs through, or borders, ten states in the United States -- Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana -- before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles (160 km) downstream from New Orleans.
The river is divided into the upper Mississippi, from its source south to the Ohio River, and the lower Mississippi from the Ohio to its mouth near New Orleans. The section above St. Louis is marked by a series of locks and dams that help to maintain the river depth for commercial barge traffic. The lakes formed by these dams are also used for recreational boating. The last dam is a rock dam just below the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. This dam protects the St. Louis city water intakes during times of low water in addition to maintaining the water level in the tailwater of dam 26 at Alton, Illinois. Below this dam the Mississippi is a free flowing river although it is constrained in its channel by numerous levies.
The mouth of the river has shifted repeatedly over time. Since a canal was built in the early nineteenth century, the river has been seeking the Atchafalaya River mouth, some 60 miles (95 km) from New Orleans. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains a massive system of locks to keep the river in its present course.
Other changes in the course of the river have occurred because of earthquakes along the New Madrid Fault Zone, which lies near the cities of Memphis and St. Louis. Three earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, estimated at approximately 8 on the Richter Scale, were said to have temporarily reversed the course of the Mississippi. These earthquakes also created Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee from the altered landscape near the river.
Davenport, Iowa is the only city over 20,000 people bordering the Mississippi that has no permanent floodwall or levee.
Watershed
The Mississippi River has the third largest drainage basin in the world, exceeded in size only by the watersheds of the Amazon River and Congo River. It drains 41 percent of the 48 contiguous states of the United States. The basin covers more than 1,245,000 square miles (3,225,000 km2), including all or parts of 31 states and two Canadian provinces.
History
The word Mississippi comes from the Ojibwe name for the river, "Messipi", which means big river.
On May 8, 1541 Hernando de Soto became the first recorded white man to reach the Mississippi River, which he called "Rio de Espiritu Santo" (River of the Holy Spirit). French explorers Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette began exploring the Mississippi, which they knew by the Sioux name "Ne Tongo" (which, like the Ojibwe name, means big river), on May 17, 1673. In 1682, [[Ren� Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle]] and Henri de Tonty claimed the entire Mississippi River Valley for France, calling it Louisiana, for King Louis XIV.
The Treaty of Paris (1763) gave England rights to all land in the valley east of the Mississippi, and Spain rights to land west of the Mississippi. France re-acquired 'Louisiana' in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800. The United States bought the territory from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
The river was noted for the number of bandits which called its islands and shores home, including John Murrell who was a well-known murderer, horse stealer and slave "re-trader." His notoriety was such that author Mark Twain devoted an entire chapter to him in his book Life on the Mississippi, and Murrell was rumored to have an island headquarters on the river at Island 37.
Twain's book also extensively covered the thrilling steamboat races which took place from 1830 to 1870 on the river before more modern boating methods replaced the steamer. It was published first in serial form in Harper's Weekly in seven parts in 1875 and was intended to chronicle the rapidly disappearing steamboat culture. The full version, including a passage from the unfinished Huckleberry Finn and works from other authors, was published by James R. Osgood & Co. in 1885. The first steamboat to travel the full length of the Mississippi from the Ohio River to the city of New Orleans, Louisiana was the New Orleans in December 1811. Its maiden voyage occurred during the series of New Madrid earthquakes in 1811-1812.
In the spring of 1927 the river broke out of its banks in 145 places during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and inundated 27,000 square miles (70,000 km²) to a depth of up to 30 feet (10 m).
The Great Flood of 1993 is considered the most devastating flood to occur in the U.S. in modern history.
In 2002 Martin Strel swam the entire length of the river.
Major cities along the river
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- St. Paul, Minnesota
- Davenport, Iowa
- St. Louis, Missouri
- Memphis, Tennessee
- Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- New Orleans, Louisiana
Notable Bridges
- The Julien Dubuque Bridge - A bridge connecting Dubuque, Iowa and East Dubuque, Illinois that is a National Historic Landmark.
- Eads Bridge - A bridge connecting St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Louis, Illinois; the first major steel bridge in the world, and also a National Historic Landmark.
See also Mississippi Delta; Mississippi River (Ontario).
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Mississippi River" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River May 15, 2004
