Wisconsin Stories is a partnership
of the Wisconsin Historical Society
and Wisconsin Public Television.
I'm Tracy Will of Wisconsin Public Television.
I'm Debbie Kmetz
with the Wisconsin Historical Society.
On this edition of Wisconsin Stories
we're going to look at some of the history of the Mississippi.
Over the next half-hour, we'll cover everything
from the early explorers on the river
to the great paddlewheel steamboat era
to clamming, to pearl button days.
We'll also look at locks and dams
and how the river once was
and still is a major transportation route
and how people live and work on the Mississippi river.
It's a lot to cover, so let's get started
on this program we call "The Great River."
Funding for Wisconsin Stories is provided in part
by an advised fund of the Community Foundation of Southern Wisconsin;
the Estate and family of Lois Backus;
the Halbert and Alice Kadish Foundation;
and Philip J. and Elizabeth B. Hendrickson
encouraging you to support history
on Wisconsin Public Television
and to visit Wisconsin's treasured historic sites.
Kmetz: The Mississippi river
forms 190 miles of the western border of Wisconsin.
"Mississippi" is an American Indian name
"Mech-e-sebe"
which translates into "Great River."
The first white men
to see the upper Mississippi river in Wisconsin
were two Frenchmen: Louis Joliet
and a Catholic priest, Jacques Marquette, in 1673.
They left a fur trader's post near Green Bay
they canoed down the Fox river
and portaged over land to the Wisconsin river.
They went down the Wisconsin river
to where it enters the Mississippi river
just south of Prairie du Chien.
Upon entering the Mississippi from the Wisconsin
Father Jacques Marquette declared:
After we arrived at the mouth of our river Wisconsin
we safely entered the Mississippi
with a joy that I cannot express.
Kmetz: Ever since, this great river, the Mississippi
has dazzled and seduced those who see it and live near it.
Some 95 years after Marquette and Joliet
another early explorer, Jonathan Carver
also entered the Mississippi from the Wisconsin.
He described the Indian trading post
at Prairie du Chien:
This town is the great mart, where all the adjacent tribes
and even those who inhabit
the most remote branches of the Mississippi
annually assemble about the end of May
bringing with them their furs to dispense of to the traders.
Kmetz: In the early 1800s
Stephen Long followed the same route.
Near La Crosse, Long wrote:
Here might the poet or bard
indulge his fancy in the wildest extravagance
while the philosopher would find a rich repast
in examining the numerous phenomena here.
Kmetz: Another early Mississippi river traveler
George Featherstonhaugh
departed Prairie du Chien in 1838.
He recorded these observations:
These scenes never satiate the eye and the mind.
Kmetz: That was the river of the 1800s
a free-flowing river--
A free-flowing river that in times of high water
often caused severe flooding.
In times of low water, it was almost unnavigable.
Then, a series of locks and dams were constructed in the 1930s.
The navigation pools, which were created by the dams
provide a nine-foot channel
for commercial barge traffic.
But long before diesel-powered river towboats were developed
the Mississippi river served as a means of travel
and the movement of freight.
Think of the Mississippi river as a road.
A road for people to travel on
a road for the movement of commercial goods
a road for migratory wildlife to follow.
This river, this road
has seen heavy traffic from the beginning.
First, American Indians and early explorers
used canoes to travel up and down the river
then fur traders used bull boats;
pioneers used flatboats and keelboats
then came the romantic paddlewheel steamboats.
Will: Before the 1930s
navigation on the Mississippi river
was largely dependent on weather conditions.
It was extremely difficult.
Will: Ed Hill is the former archivist
for the University of Wisconsin La Crosse Library.
What made the river so dangerous?
Well, it was very shallow.
And of course, it was not charted.
A steamboat going upriver
was, of course, an obstacle in itself, going upstream.
But these people did not have the charts
and navigational aids that we now have
or even those that came along 20 or 30 years later,
in terms of where the deepest channel was
where the sandbars were
where the deadheads and the logs were
which channel even to take.
Will: On the upper Mississippi water depth varied
from three feet at St. Paul, Minnesota
to five feet at Cairo, Illinois.
The channel was constantly shifting.
New sandbars and islands would come and go.
And every river trip became an adventure.
Hill: It was extremely hazardous.
That meant they went very slowly.
They were taking soundings constantly.
If there was a stump under water, six inches
that you couldn't see and your hull hit it
your boat usually sank right there.
Will: Because of the hazardous navigation
the life of a paddlewheel steamboat
on the upper Mississippi river
in the early 1800s
was only about three years.
The Wisconsin Historical Society
has a collection of steamboat-era photographs
taken by Gerhard Gessell.
Gessell was a German immigrant
who established a photo studio in Alma, in 1876.
In this half-hour, we'll see some of his photos
that portray many aspects of life
on and along the Mississippi river.
The first steamboat to travel the upper Mississippi river
from St. Louis to St. Paul was the "Virginia" in 1823.
For the next 50 years
more than 300 paddlewheel steamboats
worked the upper river from St. Louis to St. Paul
often with stops in Prairie du Chien and La Crosse.
Hill: La Crosse was called the "Gateway City."
It was a gateway in those years for points farther west
at a time when the river
was still a considerable barrier to trade.
It was less a barrier than it had been
but keep in mind that bridges over the river
were very uncommon in that time.
Will: The golden age of Mississippi river steamboats
was between 1840 and 1862
the decade before the Civil War.
With grand ballrooms and ornate woodwork
they were often referred to as floating palaces.
After the Civil War
steamboats were used to move log rafts downstream.
This river road has always been used to move goods--
trade with the Indians, and lead from southwestern Wisconsin
and after the 1850s, lumber.
Hill: Minnesota and Wisconsin had trees.
And especially the southern United States
and the farther south United States
St. Louis, and so on, needed lumber.
And at that point, the lumber companies
began to develop very quickly.
Will: In the 1860s, lumber companies
were logging along the Chippewa river in western Wisconsin.
They floated the logs down the Chippewa river to a boom site
they had at "Beef Slough," just above Alma, Wisconsin.
Here, the logs were sorted out and made into rafts
for the sawmills downstream.
Hill: And then, from that point on
the various rafters would then bring that raft
down to the proper lumber mill
where they would be made into lumber.
There were some rafts of full-size logs
that went on downstream.
Will: The upper Mississippi river
became busy with river commerce in the mid- to late-1800s.
And immigrants came by the thousands
to explore and establish homesteads.
Hill: So, that brought a lot of immigrants
many of them agricultural people, farmers, tradesmen
to the upper Midwest.
Will: America was created by people riding its rivers.
And the rapid growth and settlement
of the upper Midwest
can be traced, in part, to the paddlewheel steamboat.
By about 1890, most of the money made by steamboat companies
came from carrying passengers.
Railroads had begun to take over the freight and mail business.
Hill: The railroads had actually put a bridge across in 1876.
That was one of the reasons for the demise of the steamboats.
The railroads could go east and west
and furthermore, they could do it year round.
Will: Today, there are replica paddlewheel steamboats
like the "Julia Belle Swain"
that operate on the upper Mississippi river.
They are excursion trips
carrying passengers on overnight trips.
They are a reflection of a past era.
Kmetz: The Mississippi river
not only served as a transportation route
it also provided many forms of food and work
for those who lived near it.
In the upper river, there are many locations
where there are clam beds with thousands of clams.
Now, are clams in a bed?
How do they live?
Yes, they're called a clam bed.
They're buried in the sand on the bottom
a little bit of them sticking out.
For a shell like this size, here
they'd be sticking out like this, here.
They'd be buried into the bottom
like up to here.
Kmetz: For a time, clam beds of the upper Mississippi
did provide a way of life for commercial clammers.
Many farmers, and others along the upper Mississippi river
set themselves up with a clamming operation.
All they needed was a flat bottom boat
a length of pipe or wood
to which were attached lines.
At the end of these lines
was a wire crowfoot hook.
This type of clamming was called the "braille system."
Valley: About every three inches apart
there's a set of hooks hanging like this.
This pulls along the bottom.
On the bottom of the river? Right.
And when these hooks get in the mouth of the clam
they'll snap shut on it.
They'll hold on and they won't let go.
Kmetz: The boatload of clams was brought ashore
and the clams were put into a big tub of boiling water.
The clams would open, and all the meat was removed.
The clam shells and meat were checked for "slugs"
river pearls.
Did you ever find any pearls yourself?
Yes, I have.
Pearls are fascinating.
Tell me a little about Mississippi river pearls.
Well, I have a few here we can--
These are different sizes and shapes.
And they're from clams?
They're from Mississippi river clams?
Each one of these come out of a clam on the river.
Kmetz: In the late 1800s
the Mississippi clam shells were used to make buttons.
There were many pearl button factories
on the upper Mississippi river.
One of the largest was in Muscatine, Iowa.
Whole clam shells would be shipped by paddlewheel steamboat
to Muscatine.
Some clammers cut round blanks
out of the shells.
When the blanks arrived at the button factories
they were sliced thin
polished and had holes drilled into them.
This here is a shell
that they cut pearl buttons out of.
Oh, my goodness!
It's a washboard shell.
Each one of these is a button? Yep.
And here's what the buttons look like.
Like that, there. Oh, look!
When they finished with this
and got the buttons, they just discarded it?
They would throw away the shell.
They'd cut all the good buttons they could out of it
then they'd get rid of the shell.
Kmetz: Some clamming is still done on the upper Mississippi river.
But it is under federal control.
There are size limits
and clammers have to be licensed.
Some clammers still use the braille method
but some prefer to use diving equipment.
The shells are shipped to Japan.
But they don't make buttons out of the shells.
The Japanese put small pieces
of the Mississippi clam shell into an oyster
and the oyster makes a pearl from it.
There was millions and millions of pounds of shells
come out of the river here
and went to Japan for cultured pearls.
Kmetz: Don Valley, of Prairie du Chien
was a clammer for over 20 years, starting in the 1960s.
Can you tell me a little bit more
about how to make the cultured pearl?
Well, what they do
is you start with the washboard, like this here
a three ridge.
They take these and cut them into slugs.
They'll machine them.
They'll cut this up into pieces? Right.
Then, they machine them
to turn them into beads.
These are all clam shells?
These are all from clams, yeah
from Mississippi river clams.
Look at that.
Then, they surgically implant them into oysters.
The oyster puts a coating on them
after a year and a half or two years.
That's what cultured pearls are made from.
Kmetz: So, many of the pearls that women wear
began on the bottom of the Mississippi river.
When you did make a living at it
was that something you did all year round
or just in the spring?
In the spring, pretty much
or when the water was high enough to pull your boat.
When you couldn't do that
you'd go back to fishing or do something else.
Kmetz: Commercial clamming went into decline
when Japan had a red tide that killed many oyster beds.
And then the zebra mussel invaded the river.
Commercial clamming is over with.
It's just over? Yeah.
Zebra mussels cover everything up in the river.
The Department of Natural Resources says in some places
they're two to three-foot thick on the bottom
the zebra mussels.
And when they lay over the clams
are they suffocating the clams?
Yeah, to where the clams can't feed
and can't reproduce.
Kmetz: Like the paddlewheel steamboat, commercial clamming
on the Mississippi river is not what it used to be.
But old clam shells with round holes cut in them
can still be found along the banks of the Mississippi
where there used to be a button factory.
John Gorman: The lock is like a bathtub.
Traffic heading downstream
enters the lock with the lock full.
Then, the tub is drained
and you sail out at the lower elevation.
In reverse, when you want to head upstream
enter the lock, the gates are closed
fill the lock, go out at the higher level.
Simple as that.
Will: John Gorman grew up on the river
and worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
as a surveyor.
I started working for Corps in 1945
and I worked with them until 1953.
The initial work
was working on a survey crew as a rod person.
That was making maps, mostly topographic maps
sometimes measuring river depths.
Some of the surveys determined the stability of structures
such as locks and dams along the river--
maintenance operations.
Will: Gorman lived on the river
before the locks and dams were built
and worked on the river after they were put in.
Over the years, he's made a study of the river.
It's been on my mind, yes, for many, many years.
I've been living on it. I grew up on it.
I learned to swim in it in La Crosse.
I just like the valley and everything about it.
Will: In his study of the river
Gorman has maps that show how the river was
before the locks and dams were put in.
There were a lot less water expanses.
There was more land showing than there is now
evident by the raise of the water levels.
Will: Gorman says the lock and dam system built in the 1930s
was intended for a special reason:
transportation.
As early as 1830, the federal government knew
that the upper Mississippi river served an important role
in the settlement of the upper Midwest.
The Army Corps of Engineers did everything they could
to improve navigation on the Mississippi river.
They removed snags and deadheads.
They dredged out sandbars.
They dynamited rock in the channel
to make navigation safe between St. Louis and St. Paul.
In 1907, a six-foot channel was authorized by congress.
The Army Engineers
installed thousands of brush and rock wing dams.
These wing dams were piles of rock
extending out from shore sometimes 500 to 600 feet.
The wing dams confined the river
to a narrow channel during low water periods
so it was deep enough for the steamboats to navigate.
By the late 1920s, it became clear
that the upper Midwest could benefit economically
if a dependable nine-foot channel
could be provided on the upper Mississippi river.
So, in 1930, congress passed legislation
that authorized the Army Corps of Engineers
to build a lock and dam system
from St. Louis to Minneapolis.
There are nine lock and dams on the Wisconsin border.
Now we have a nine-foot channel.
Gorman: Two things happened there.
One was the Depression and the want for jobs
positions for people, to bring them a livelihood.
And the other was the cue and cry
of the industrialists and farmers in the Midwest
to get a form of transportation
that they could depend on being in for a stable price.
Railroads pretty well had them hammered.
Will: So, the locks and dams were built
for a less expensive form of moving goods, like grain
fertilizer and cl, says Gorman.
And were not intended to control river floods.
Flood control was attempted
through construction of levees and dikes along the river.
It was perfectly logical thing
just as the river operators
wanted river improvements for their purposes
towns and villages and cities wanted protection from floods.
And here again, the Corps of Engineers
steps in to do this.
They welcomed the opportunities
to straighten the river, channel it, put up levees--
all kinds of protective walls
for towns and villages.
And of course, one of the things this did
was to make the flood
when it reached a certain point, even more destructive.
That water's got to go somewhere.
Will: The lock and dam system
creates pools of water above the dams.
The Village of Stoddard became a river town in 1937
when the pool created by lock and dam number eight
put the river at its doorstep.
And there have been other changes in the river
since the locks and dams were put in.
Al Reed: But it seems like, since about the '80s till now
the water's always like at an eight-foot level or above.
And nothing has a chance to grow
so you don't have no vegetation on the steep shorelines.
So, consequently, all the boat waves
and wind waves just keep washing it out.
Will: Al Reed has lived all his life near the river.
His ancestors have lived in Prairie du Chien
since the 1820s.
He believes the water levels are too high.
Like even the islands over here, right in back of us.
When I was a kid, you had just about enough room
to get through there with your boat.
Now, there's hardly any island there.
There are six or seven islands that are completely gone.
Hill: It's a massive ecological system
which is undergoing a lot of changes.
In most cases, man made changes.
Will: When they put in the lock and dam system which we have now
the water level was raised above the stone wing dams.
Wing dams that were part of
an earlier attempt to channel the river.
Hill: There are all kinds of horror stories
of people who forget to watch for the wing dams.
Some wing dams are only about this far under the water.
And some of the local businesses
do a very wonderful trade in propeller repair.
Will: For those who choose to live near the river
there are many ways to make a living.
Fishing, hunting, trapping.
One has to like being outdoors
and, perhaps, a jack of all trades.
They're called "river rats."
Yep, sure, call us all river rats.
Will: And what is a river rat?
Well, just anybody that works on the river.
I've been working on the river 44 years.
Started out in 1934
and then quit in 1977.
Will: Dick Schickling, of Prescott, is a former river pilot.
Well, I have five brothers
and they all worked on the river.
Four of them were pilots.
Will: Schickling started working on the Mississippi in the 1930s
as a deck hand on a barge.
We'd help make up tow and clean the boat up
paint it
mop the decks-- splash lines.
Ropes are called lines out on the river.
Cables are called wires.
Will: Schickling received his river pilot's license in 1942.
Schickling: Well, you have a written examination
about 150 questions.
And you've gotta get about 85 percent of them right.
And you have to draw a map of the river.
You had to put down the wing dams, and the towns
and the bridges, and the railroad bridges
the widths and the heights of it, everything.
Will: He worked as towboat pilot on the river from 1942 to 1977
helping barges get up and down the river.
Schickling: Well, you had to follow the channel
Will: Schickling knows just about every slough and back water
on the Mississippi.
Schickling: Well, you're going around a bend, yeah.
It ain't a turn on the river, it's a bend.
You get used to it
just like driving down the highway.
Well, you gotta know what you're doing
especially in high water.
Will: Like many who live and work near the river
Schickling did a little bit of everything.
He was once a commercial fisherman.
Schickling: Carp, buffalo, catfish, sheephead--
We would take them down to Pepin, Wisconsin.
They had a fish market down there.
I had a smokehouse sitting right here
and a tree over there, a great big tree.
And it fell down, hit the roof, smashed the smokehouse.
Will: Schickling smoked carp in his backyard.
He'd take his home-smoked carp downtown and sell them.
But he says it was more of a hobby.
It was beer money.
Oh, we'd stop on the way home.
By the time we got home, we'd be broke.
Will: The markets for Mississippi river fish
began to close down one by one in the last ten to 15 years.
And it's getting harder and harder
to make commercial fishing on the river a full-time job.
The river changes, and yet it stays the same.
This great river continues to impress and awe
those who come to know it.
Once the river gets in your blood, it's hard to get out.
The river's brought a lot of fulfillment to me.
I've enjoyed every bit of it--
still do.
Ah, it's a wonderful place.
It's a wonderful place.
I was only about three years old
when I went down to the ferry line and I fell in.
I threw a rock in and went in with it.
The guy on the ferry pulled me out and took me home.
My mother gave me a good spanking.
Ten minutes later, I'm down on the river again.
I just fell in love with the river.
Hill: The people who want to live along the river
they want to have their feet wet.
There is something about the river
that attracts a certain kind of resident.
Will: Ed Hill says
he never tires traveling the Mississippi river valley.
He likes to drive the great river road
that hugs the river-- Highway 35.
Hill: I never get tired of it.
I never get tired of stopping and having a meal
and a drink in a river town café or bar.
( laughs ) That's my problem
I'd like to stop in all of them!
There's so much feel for the river.
You know they've been there a long while.
The people who live there are absolutely locked in
in terms of their attitude.
You talk to them and they would never live anywhere else.
That's because of this vast, metaphorical river, this stream
going from history forward, from history to the future.
It's a metaphor that I think any human being can relate to
because that's how life is.
It's a beautiful place. Yes.
[Captioning services provided by Wisconsin Public Television.] www.wpt.org
Funding for Wisconsin Stories is provided in part
by an advised fund of the Community Foundation of Southern Wisconsin;
the Estate and family of Lois Backus;
the Halbert and Alice Kadish Foundation;
and Philip J. and Elizabeth B. Hendrickson
encouraging you to support history
on Wisconsin Public Television
and to visit Wisconsin's treasured historic sites.