Mississippi River Navigation contents may be viewed in their entirety:

Early Navigation
Steamboat Navigation
Federal Participation in Waterways Development
River Commerce
The Mississippi River System

HISTORY

No river has played a greater part in the development and expansion of America than the Mississippi. Since the first person viewed this mighty stream, it has been a vital factor in the physical and economic growth of this country. It has stood in the path of discoverers, challenging their ingenuity to cross it. It has fired the imaginations of explorers, luring them on to seek out its mysteries. And always it has stood in the minds of practical men as the key to westward expansion, an economic prize to be sought and held at all cost. As such, it has been fought over on the battlefield and used as a pawn in diplomatic exchanges.

Coursing in a buttonhook pattern out of tiny Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it twists and turns through the land of the Chippewa, 2,348 miles south through the heart of the United States. It sweeps past Minneapolis and St. Paul, growing larger as tributaries add their flows. It is joined by the Missouri north of St. Louis and receives the waters of the Ohio at Cairo, Illinois. Here it becomes the Lower Mississippi, a river giant, unequaled among American waters. Flowing south, it touches romantic river towns-Memphis, Greenville, Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. Almost a thousand river miles south of Cairo, it pours its torrent into the Gulf of Mexico.

DISCOVERY

Columbus may have been the first European to view the Mississippi River. An "Admiral's Map" in the Royal Library at Madrid, said to have been engraved in 1507, shows the mouth of the river, then called "The River of Palms." But this is conjecture.

In 1541, Hernando DeSoto viewed the Mississippi at a point near or just below Memphis, Tenn. DeSoto died in April 1542, but his followers continued the explorations. The historian of the expedition, Garciliaso de la Vega, described the Mississippi as in a flood of great severity and of prolonged duration, beginning about March 10, 1543, and reaching its peak about 40 days later. The flooded areas were described as extending for 20 leagues on each side of the river.

One hundred and twenty years later, Joliet and Marquette explored the river, traveling from its upper reaches to a point near Arkansas City, Arkansas. Soon after, LaSalle descended the greater portion of its length to its mouth. In 1699, d'lberville entered the mouth of the river and at appoint near Old River received a letter from an Indian chief previously left there by LaSalle.