This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
On July 3rd, 1930, the Congress of the United States found the Upper Mississippi River guilty of insubordination and sentenced it to life in prison. And since the insubordinate river would not go to prison, the prison came to the river, in the form of 26 locks and dams between St. Paul and St. Louis.
The Nine-Foot Channel Project, as the sentence was called, came at the end of a long trial. The prosecution argued that river transportation would never grow so long as the wild Mississippi was allowed to do whatever it wanted. It created sandbars, rapids and snags which sank boats, and it varied its water level so unpredictably that large boats could not maneuver at all. The prosecution asked that dams be built to maintain a consistent nine-foot channel. The defenders of the Mississippi argued that locks and dams would destroy an historically free river, a natural waterway open to all—to fish, wildlife, humans.
On July 3rd, 1930, the prosecution won. Over the next nine years the sentence was carried out. The work began at the most stubborn section of the river, the Rock Island Rapids. In the spring of 1934, this first project, Locks and Dam 15, was open to traffic, and the Upper Mississippi was no longer wild.
By 1939, the entire sentence had been carried out. The old Mississippi River disappeared. In its place lay a series of lakes or pools created by the dams, each a little higher than the other climbing 335 feet in the 662 miles from St. Louis to St. Paul. An Aquatic Staircase, some called it, of the kind Paul Bunyan might have used.
The stairs were not even. The steps ranged in height from five and a half feet at Lock 5A at Winona, Minnesota, to the big step, 38.2 feet at Keokuk, Iowa. Large towboats and small pleasure craft alike use locks at each dam to climb or descend the staircase.
Will there be any future parole for the Mississippi? Not likely. Time off is traditionally given only on the basis of good behavior, and all too often, the stubborn river makes an attempt to go over the wall, and gets years added to it sentence.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
