Bluffing His Way to Fame
BOXING IN THE HEARTLAND, Chapter 3:
IN WHICH WE LEARN ABOUT BARGE POWER
SPACE
Day 3: Cape Girardeau, MO to St. Charles, MO. In the 1730s, an adventurous young Frenchman named Jean Baptiste Girardot established a trading post at the site of a rocky bluff on the west bank of the Mississippi River. This bluff, which projected into the river, was known as "the cape," and soon people began calling the area Cape Girardeau. Even though Girardot and his trading post remained only a few years, the name stuck.
By the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition arrived in 1803, the community which had begun around the post numbered more than 1,000. The growth of steamboats on the river spurred further expansion, and the Cape, as it is still called today, moved from village to city. It continued to grow with the arrival of the railroad.
(Pictured above: Common Pleas Courthouse, completed in 1854)  |
| Missouri Wall of Fame on Cape Girardeau flood wall |
A treacherous ally, the Mississippi River gave with one hand and took away with the other. Periodic floods destroyed the city the river had helped to build until the Cape took action to keep the river in its channel. In 1964, the city completed the construction of a 20-foot flood wall to protect the historic downtown from the ravages of the Mississippi's historic floods. To make these functional structures more attractive, Cape Girardeau has included the floodwalls in its extensive collection of downtown murals depicting historical events.
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| Cape Girardeau riverfront |
The Cape's love
–hate relationship with the river is commemorated in interpretive signs along the riverfront. It was there that we learned the massive reach of the Mississippi River system. Areas from Asheville, NC to Chatauqua, NY, from Cimmaron, NM, to Yellowstone National Park in WY, all lie in the drainage basin of the Mississippi River. This basin includes all or parts of 32 states and two Canadian provinces, covering 41% of the landmass of the continental United States.
From the head of the river in Minnesota to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River flows more than 2,340 miles. That's the river itself, not including any of its major tributaries. At Cape Girardeau, the river flows at the rate of one million gallons of water per second. Though that seems a huge amount, the flow of the Amazon River in South America is ten times greater than the entire Mississippi River system combined.
The nearby Trail of Tears State Park afforded an elevated perspective on the river. The park is located where nine of the 13 Cherokee Indian groups being relocated to Oklahoma
crossed the Mississippi River during harsh winter conditions in 1838-39. Thousands lost their lives on the trail, including dozens on or near the park's grounds. The park visitor center tells the tale of the thousands who
died on the forced march, and a memorial in the park pays tribute to all the Cherokee who died on the trail.
Whenever we catch a glimpse of the river, we usually observe barge traffic. Though an important form of transportation for people in the early days of the United States, river travel has largely been replaced by cars and air lines. For cargo, river transportation is still a very viable, relatively inexpensive method of moving goods.
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| Moving goods on the Mississippi |
A single barge usually carries about 1500 tons of cargo, 15 times what a rail car can move and 60 times greater than one trailer truck. The average tow on the Mississippi has 15 barges, but flotillas can go up to 40 barges, depending on the type of cargo, the river segments being navigated, and the size of the towboat. The tow pictured here is a little smaller than average with only 11 barges. Yet it has the capacity to carry as much cargo as a train over two miles long or a line of 660 trucks.
The largest bulk items moved on the Mississippi are petroleum products—gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil and lubricating oil, which are shipped upstream from the oil fields of Texas and Louisiana. Coal is shipped upstream from Illinois and western Kentucky. Downstream barges often carry grains, such as corn, wheat, oats, barley and rye, conveyed to New Orleans for transfer to ocean vessels and shipment around the world.
ROAD NOISE space
Dial It In. More and more often we are seeing audio tours by cell phone. The
Chickamauga military park employed this clever device, as did the city
of Cape Girardeau. We find it to be a brilliant solution— an interactive audio tour that the host museum or cultural institution can change and update easily, it's available 24/7, and no special equipment is needed.
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