The very first sentence of this article, talking about how the Mississippi River flowed “unchecked” for millions of years until the dams of the early 20th century, are highly debatable and bordering on false.
There used to be a massive, natural ‘dam’ made of logs, dirt, plants, and other debris that formed a miles-long plug near the end of the river. This was called the Great Raft, and it was heavily documented by colonizers who began exploring the river and the lands to the west of it. The Raft was destroyed to make commercial travel easier, and is thought to have had a devastating impact on the ecology of areas as far west as Colorado as a result of this water now actually flowing freely as opposed to flowing much more slowly and soaking into the ground.
If you want more info on it, Milo Rossi (aka Miniminuteman) did an incredibly informative video on it recently, and I cannot recommend it enough. If we are going to be supporting efforts to restore this areas natural ecology, we need to do proper research to see what that ecology actually was, instead of assuming that things always looked and worked the way they did in 1900.
The very first sentence of this article, talking about how the Mississippi River flowed “unchecked” for millions of years until the dams of the early 20th century, are highly debatable and bordering on false.
There used to be a massive, natural ‘dam’ made of logs, dirt, plants, and other debris that formed a miles-long plug near the end of the river. This was called the Great Raft, and it was heavily documented by colonizers who began exploring the river and the lands to the west of it. The Raft was destroyed to make commercial travel easier, and is thought to have had a devastating impact on the ecology of areas as far west as Colorado as a result of this water now actually flowing freely as opposed to flowing much more slowly and soaking into the ground.
If you want more info on it, Milo Rossi (aka Miniminuteman) did an incredibly informative video on it recently, and I cannot recommend it enough. If we are going to be supporting efforts to restore this areas natural ecology, we need to do proper research to see what that ecology actually was, instead of assuming that things always looked and worked the way they did in 1900.
Edit: corrected some spelling.