Mississippi River Basin

“ Francis basin, is therefore merely the result of a consideration of the watershed of each basin, all the water, however, from each ultimately finding its way to the Gulf of Mexico, either through the Mississippi river, or in the lower basins in part, at least, by the means of streams flowing independently of the Mississippi river to the Gulf of Mexico. On the east bank the situation is different. In the long stretch from Cairo, Illinois, to a point a short distance below Memphis, generally speaking, the hills and uplands border the river and constitute its bank. ”

“ The large area of the drainage basin of the Mississippi would yield an unmanageable amount of water to the lower river during the stage of flood if the excess of discharge at that time resulted from a uniform rainfall condition. The very size of the basin with the tributaries of the main stream reaching far into rainfall areas of different types and seasons is beneficial to the control of floods. ”

“ No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its water supply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from Delaware, on the Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idaho on the Pacific slope—a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude. The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from fifty-four subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats, and from some hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels. ”

“ The Mississippi, which drains a river basin of 1,147,000 square miles, has an annual discharge of sediment of no less than 7,459,267,200 cubic feet. The Italian River Po, -21- draining an area of 30,000 square miles, discharges 1,510,137,000 cubic feet of sediment annually. This is equivalent to a lowering of its whole drainage area by 1/729th of a foot per annum, so that in a thousand years the whole area over which it flows has been lowered by the river by more than a foot. The Thames alone carries down 5,000,000 tons of material each year. ”

“ Through these places an ancient highway has coursed from times to which the memory of white men runneth not to the contrary. Water was scarce on the highest grounds, but springs, here and there, were well known, and at one of these, probably near Lenan (section 15, township 8, range 3) , the adventurers paused, on the night of September 2, and built their evening fires. [15]
The end was now almost in sight; two days more and the immediate basin of the Mississippi River would be reached, and the success or failure of the daring raid be decided. ”

“ On reaching the summit of the St. Croix, there are found vast plateaux of sand, supporting pine forests; and on descending the Misakoda, or Brulé of Fond du Lac, the sandstone strata of that basin are again encountered. This ascent was rendered arduous, from the low state of the water. I reached Snake River on the 30th, had an interview with the Buffalo chief (Pezhikee) and his subordinates; finding the population 300, with thirty-eight half breeds. The men, while here, cut their feet, treading on the trap-rock debris, in the mouth of the river. ”

“ The Lakes to the Gulf Deep Waterway Association has always felt the necessity of allying itself with the Upper Mississippi River Improvement Association, the Ohio River Improvement Association, and the general Conservation movement for the best development of all river channels. The Mississippi today has the largest storage reservoirs in the world, although they are almost equaled now by the storage in the Salt River Irrigation Project in Arizona. ”

“ I know not how else to account for the light which has suddenly burst upon us from this bank of the Mississippi, and which has at once proved it to be as valuable for the purposes of agriculture as for those of mining, and as sylvan in its appearance as if it were not fringed, as it were, with rocks, and lying at a great elevation above the water. This elevation is so considerable as to permit a lively descent in the streams, forming numerous mill-seats. The surface of the country is not, however, broken, but may be compared to the heavy and lazy-rolling waves of the sea after a tempest. ”

“ And the history of the Red River valley shows that it has long been plagued by such disasters and burdened by their costs. [20]
Floods pay no respect to state lines. [21] Their effective control in the Mississippi valley has become increasingly a subject of national concern [22] in recognition of the fact that single states are impotent to cope with them effectively. The methods of dealing with them have elicited a contrariety of views. [23]
The idea of reservoir control on the tributaries of the Mississippi is not new. ”

“ All the rivers tributary to the Mississippi show a decided tendency to low water in the autumn, the southern waters beginning to fall from a high stage in June and the northern in July. All begin to rise from low water in winter—the southern tributaries earlier, and the northern ones later. Two freshets occur during the year in each of the large tributary basins. The coincidence of the highest stage in more than two of the large branches is extremely rare, and hence it is an exception for the main river to be subjected to the enormously congested state which would otherwise result. ”

“ From this history it is plain that this project, which is part of a comprehensive flood control plan, is designed to control the watershed of one of the principal tributaries of the Mississippi in alleviation of floods in the lower Red River and Mississippi valleys. The Red River, sixth in length among rivers in the United States, has one of the largest watersheds in the country, draining an area about 50 per cent larger than New England-an area of 91,430 square miles, of which 38,291 square miles are above the dam site. ”

“ The flood evil is in a large way the underlying cause of most of the trouble in the Mississippi. At time of flood, the erosive power of the river is increased a hundredfold, caving of the banks is often excessive, levees situated rods from the channel before the flood and apparently safe are undermined, and the narrowing of necks between bends is greatly accelerated or quickly accomplished. ”

“ The levees could not withstand the Mississippi in its mighty and ruthless violence, and they gave way in numerous crevasses, varying from one hundred to five thousand feet in width, aggregating fully six miles. Through these great chasms the flood has been pouring since the 15th April, in a stream seven feet in average depth and at the rate of more than seven miles an hour. More water is even now flowing from the great river over the farms and plantations of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, than falls over Niagara. ”

“ From the Alleghenies, from the Rocky Mountains, from the Black Hills, the Ozarks, and the prairies of Minnesota, the streams are ever bringing down fine, fertile soil into the Mississippi, which spreads it at times of high water over fields, forests, and swamps and carries some of it into the gulf. So great is the amount of fine soil carried by the great river that every year it would make a vast block a square mile in area and four hundred feet high. ”

“ In a commercial point of view is the Mississippi equally as remarkable as in its physical presentations. It is the aorta through which, from the heart of the nation, flow the bountiful returns of industrious and productive labor, which thus find an outlet to all parts of the world, opening an avenue of trade for millions of energetic men and fertile acres. Thus not only is it the life-supporting, but as well the life-imparting artery of a great section of the republic.
But it is unnecessary to speak of the commercial importance of the river. This is patent to everybody. ”

“ The Mississippi is indeed a grand study, and the people who have lived in its valley during past ages have seen the river doing just what it is doing to-day; and as race has succeeded race, each in turn has seen the landmarks of its predecessors swept away by its angry flood and buried beneath its sediment. ”

“ NEARLY THE WHOLE OF THAT ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED MILES OF OLD MISSISSIPPI RIVER WHICH LA SALLE FLOATED DOWN IN HIS CANOES, TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO, IS GOOD SOLID DRY GROUND NOW. The river lies to the right of it, in places, and to the left of it in other places.
Although the Mississippi's mud builds land but slowly, down at the mouth, where the Gulfs billows interfere with its work, it builds fast enough in better protected regions higher up: for instance, Prophet's Island contained one thousand five hundred acres of land thirty years ago ”

“ The ditches were filled, sandbanks formed in many places, and the sugar-cane fields covered with the débris of the Mississippi. There were two or three crevasses of nearly equal magnitude between Port Hudson and the mouth of Red river, and upper Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi suffered terribly from the overflow, caused in great part by the breaking away of the newly built levees. The entire valley of Red river, whose bottoms furnish perhaps the best cotton lands in the world, was inundated below Jefferson, Texas. Many of the best buildings in Shreveport and Alexandria were undermined. ”

“ As a usual thing the spring floods are beneficial to the country, for the Mississippi is a very muddy river, and when it overflows it spreads this mud over the country, in much the same fashion that the Nile does, and with the same result of fertilizing and enriching the soil. ”

“ The low alluvial plain of the Mississippi becomes a vast reservoir. Without this, it would be impossible to control the flood below. The banks are entirely covered, and the voyager beholds an immense lake spread out before him, whose waters rush through the forest with a subdued and angry roar, the wide open space between the trees alone indicating the course of the river. And now, wherever in this vast region civilization has planted her foot, begins that conflict between man and the elements and the forces of nature, which in one form or another is as old as the human race. ”

“ The surface of the medial plains is not always so even as might be inferred from their name. Both the eastern and the western areas have been extensively denuded, even to the point of being reduced to peneplains. Their present altitude is not so much the result of their original uplift from the sea as of a later elevator movement. The great river basins, for which North America is famous, have thus been formed between the eastern and western highlands—the Mississippi receiving the drainage of a vast area (about 1,240,000 sq. m.) ”

“ After entering the Mississippi, below Sandy Lake, the stream presents very much the character it has above. It was below this point that we first observed the juglans nigra in the forest. Its banks are diluvial or alluvial formations, elevated from six to ten feet. The elm, maple, and pine are common. There are some small grassy islands, with tufts of willows, and driftwood lodged. No rock strata appear. The river winds its way through vast diluvial beds, exhibiting at its rapids granitical, quartz, and trappose boulders. ”

“ These are connected by a network of rivers, which pour their redundancy into the Mississippi, and keep up a circulation over the whole vast area. The sand plains often resting around the shores of these lakes create the impression of bodies of water resting on sand, which is a fallacy. Some of these bodies of water are choked up, or not well drained, and overflow their borders, forming sphagnous tracts. Hence the frequent succession of arid sand plains, impassable muskeegs, and arable areas on the same plateaux. Every system of the latter, of the same altitude, constitutes a plateau. ”

“ On a great public highway like the Mississippi, supporting an immense commerce and bearing it to every part of the globe, purchasers must have obtained lands for the beneficial use of the river as well as for the land. Can it be presumed that the United States would make grants of lands bordering upon this river, with its turbulent current, and subject to constant change in its banks by alluvion upon the one side and avulsions upon the other, and then claim all accretion formed by the gradual deposition of sand and soil, and deprive the grantee of his river front? ”

“ This year the State itself had undertaken to repair them, issuing eight per cent. bonds to the amount of a million dollars for the purpose,—the expense of the work to be defrayed eventually by the planters.
For a long distance the Lower Mississippi, at high water, appears to be flowing upon a ridge. The river has built up its own banks higher than the country which lies back of them; and the levees have raised them still higher. Behind this fertile strip there are extensive swamps, containing a soil of unsurpassed depth and richness, but unavailable for want of drainage. ”

“ Bricks will be used for building; coal and peat will be used for fuel; hedges and ditches will be made for fences; forests will be made to grow on the prairies; and deep wells will be sunk for pure water.
There is a fine tract of rich level land extending along the eastern shore of the Mississippi about eighty miles in length, and from three to six miles in width. It commences near New-Alton, and terminates a little below Kaskaskia. About half of its width bordering on the river, is covered with a heavy growth of timber ”

“ Instead of living in constant fear of such a calamity, the people of the Mississippi flood plain have sought safety by making artificial levees, to make floods impossible. These are built upon the natural levees. As the river bed rises by the deposit of mud, [Pg 125] the levees are built higher to contain the rising waters. No longer does the rich soil of the Mississippi flood plain receive layers of sediment from the river's overflow. The river very rarely breaks through a levee. ”