If the one time you encounter the Mississippi River is when crossing it through a bridge or ferry, it is easy to disregard how a lot work has gone into managing the mighty waterway.
A brand new ebook provides a extremely visible perspective on that effort.
“The US Military Corps of Engineers on the Mississippi River,” (Arcadia Publishing, $21.99) by Damon Manders, a historian who has written typically in regards to the Corps, reveals greater than tells. There are 223 Corps pictures, maps and drawings on 127 about two centuries of makes an attempt to tame North America’s greatest river.
The Mississippi, to say the least, hasn’t at all times cooperated, because the pictures additionally present. The 1927 flood, arguably probably the most devastating pure catastrophe in U.S. historical past, will get the longest chapter within the ebook. Though the impact can be extra vivid if the pictures had been bigger — the ebook’s 6½-by-9-inch format is limiting — they present how the flood ravaged a lot of the nation’s heartland, together with tributaries miles from the primary river itself.
However, whereas they’re probably the most dramatic, the catastrophe pictures aren’t probably the most academic elements of this ebook. Somewhat, it is how the Corps has developed strategies by the yr to resolve the myriad points the Mississippi River presents. It hasn’t been simply flooding: The Corps has needed to account for sediment that clogs channels and, for a time, blocked the mouth of the river from business site visitors. Among the options really create issues of their very own, equivalent to how clearing a logjam between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers inspired the Mississippi to attempt to change course, bypassing Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The Corps has been combating that change — efficiently, to this point — ever since.
The Corps’ methods to take care of these points have ranged in dimension, complexity and expense — from low-tech strategies like stopping financial institution erosion with mats of interlaced willow branches to diversions just like the Bonnet Carre Spillway and Previous River Management Construction.
Pore by this ebook and also you won’t see the Mississippi River fairly the identical manner.