50 Fun Facts About Mississippi River

The Mississippi traditionally begins at which Minnesota lake?

The lake sits 1,475 feet above sea level in Itasca State Park, and visitors can walk across the river on stepping stones there.

Which is the only US river longer than the Mississippi?

Measured from the Missouri's own source in Montana, the combined system runs about 3,710 miles, the fourth longest in the world.

Per the USGS, how long is the Mississippi from its source lake to the Gulf of Mexico?

The traditional figure has shifted over the years as engineers straightened bends and the delta grew.

The name Mississippi comes from Misi-ziibi, a phrase in which Native American language?

The French rendered it as Misi zipi; a Sioux guide travelling with the first French explorers called it Ne Tongo, 'big river'.

What does the name Misi-ziibi, from which 'Mississippi' derives, mean?

Upstream sections had less flattering Ojibwe names, including one translated as 'Miserable Wretched Dirty Water River'.

Henry Schoolcraft coined the name of the Mississippi's source lake from Latin words meaning what?

He mashed together the end of veritas and the start of caput; the Ojibwe called the lake Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan, Elk Lake.

Roughly how deep is the Mississippi where it leaves its source lake?

By the time it nears the mouth the same river is around 200 feet deep.

Where is the deepest point of the Mississippi River?

It reaches about 200 feet there; below Cairo the river typically runs 50 to 100 feet deep.

The Mississippi runs through or along how many US states?

Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi lie on the east bank; Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas on the west; Minnesota and Louisiana at either end.

The 'Middle Mississippi' runs 190 miles from St. Louis to the Ohio confluence at which Illinois town?

The Middle Mississippi drops 220 feet over about 180 miles, much steeper than the sluggish lower river.

Which tributary carries more water than the Mississippi itself at the point where the two meet?

Its long-term mean flow at the confluence is about 281,500 cubic feet per second against the Mississippi's 208,200 just upstream.

Saint Anthony Falls, the only true waterfall on the Mississippi, is in which city?

The lock there was closed in 2015 to stop invasive Asian carp moving upstream.

Which lake near Grand Rapids, Minnesota, is the Mississippi's widest point at more than 11 miles across?

Lake Onalaska near La Crosse, created by a dam, is more than four miles wide.

The sport of water skiing was invented in 1922 on which wide stretch of the Mississippi?

Eighteen-year-old Ralph Samuelson used two boards and a clothesline as a towrope at Lake City, Minnesota.

Which 1963 floodgate complex stops the Mississippi from changing course away from its lower cities?

About 30 percent of the flow is deliberately let through to the shortcut channel, whose steeper path to the Gulf would otherwise capture the whole river.

Which river, a distributary in Louisiana, would capture the Mississippi's flow if engineers let it?

It takes 30 percent of the combined Mississippi and Red River flow through a floodgate complex built in 1963.

Which Mississippi delta lobe, active through all recorded history, is named for its shape?

It is also called the Balize Delta after La Balize, the first French settlement at the river's mouth.

Sediment build-up makes the lower Mississippi jump to a new path to the Gulf roughly how often?

The process is called avulsion or delta switching, and modern engineering exists to hold it off.

Which earthquake zone between Memphis and St. Louis produced magnitude-8 quakes in 1811–12?

The shocks were felt across the Midwest and as far away as the East Coast.

Which Tennessee lake was created by the great earthquakes of 1811–12?

The quakes struck a sparsely settled frontier, which is why they killed few people despite their size.

Who was the first recorded European to reach the Mississippi, in 1519?

De Soto followed 22 years later and died beside the river the following year.

Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi in 1541 and gave it what Spanish name?

It means River of the Holy Spirit; de Soto died the following year and was buried in the river.

In 1682 La Salle claimed the Mississippi valley for France and named the river after whom?

The region itself he called La Louisiane, after King Louis XIV.

Which pair of French explorers began exploring the Mississippi in 1673?

Marquette wanted to call it the River of the Immaculate Conception; a Sioux guide called it Ne Tongo.

Which Frenchman founded the city on the river crescent, about 100 miles above the mouth, in 1718?

His brother Iberville had rediscovered the river's mouth in 1699 after La Salle's death.

The United States gained control of the whole river through which 1803 deal?

Pinckney's Treaty of 1795 had earlier secured Americans the right to navigate the river through Spanish territory.

Which pre-Columbian city near the Mississippi, once larger than London, was occupied from about 600 to 1400 AD?

Its mounds stand across the river from St. Louis; the largest, Monks Mound, is bigger at its base than the Great Pyramid.

In which year did the first steamboat travel down the Lower Mississippi from the Ohio?

Its maiden voyage coincided with the great earthquakes shaking the river.

Mark Twain took his pen name from a leadsman's cry meaning the river was how deep?

Twelve feet was safe water for a steamboat; Twain worked as a river pilot before the Civil War.

Which 1883 Mark Twain book is a memoir of his years as a steamboat pilot?

It covers the steamboat era of 1830 to 1870 and even sneaks in a passage from the unfinished Huckleberry Finn.

In 1856 the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi linked Davenport, Iowa, and which Illinois arsenal town?

Two weeks later the steamboat Effie Afton hit it and burned, triggering a famous lawsuit.

Which future president was the railroad's lawyer after a steamboat hit the first Mississippi rail bridge in 1856?

Steamboat captains had branded the bridge a hazard to navigation, fearing competition from the railroads.

Completed in 1874 at St. Louis, the Eads Bridge pioneered the large-scale structural use of which material?

It was the first bridge across the Mississippi below the Missouri confluence and is still in use.

Which Confederate stronghold on the bluffs fell on 4 July 1863, giving the Union control of the river?

Port Hudson surrendered days later, and Lincoln declared that 'the Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea'.

The 1865 explosion of which steamboat near Memphis remains the worst maritime disaster in US history?

She was built for 376 passengers but carried 2,127, mostly freed Union prisoners of war heading home.

Which future president built his reputation directing relief during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927?

The flood put 27,000 square miles under water and left more than 700,000 people homeless.

After the 1927 disaster, the Flood Control Act of 1928 built the world's longest system of what?

The Corps of Engineers had previously tried to close side channels to speed the main river, a strategy the flood proved disastrously wrong.

Which Slovenian swam the entire Mississippi in 2002, taking 68 days?

Fred Newton had been the first to swim the river's length back in 1930.

What is the 'Great River Road'?

Developed from 1938, it runs through all ten river states, with a pilot's-wheel logo marking the route.

Which stainless-steel monument on the St. Louis riverfront, 630 feet tall, was designed by Eero Saarinen?

Eero Saarinen designed it in 1947 and it was finished in 1965, standing 630 feet.

Nutrient runoff carried down the Mississippi is the primary cause of what in the Gulf of Mexico?

Fertiliser from Midwest farms feeds algae whose decay strips oxygen from a huge patch of the Gulf each summer.

The 29 locks and dams on the upper Mississippi maintain a navigation channel of what minimum depth?

Most were built in the 1930s under the Rivers and Harbors Act; from Baton Rouge down, ocean ships get a 45-foot channel.

Roughly how many fish species are known from the Mississippi basin?

That is more than any other temperate river basin except the Yangtze, which is why it is called the 'mother fauna' of North American freshwater.

A flood in which year shifted the Mississippi and stranded Kaskaskia, Illinois on the west bank?

Today the enclave has around 14 residents and can only be reached from the west bank.

Which 1927 musical gave the world the river anthem 'Ol' Man River'?

Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein wrote it; Paul Robeson's recording made it his signature song.

Ice-age glaciers blocked the Mississippi near which Illinois town, shoving it west?

The old channel is roughly traced today by the Hennepin Canal.

The Mississippi has the world's fourth-largest drainage basin. Roughly what share of it lies in Canada?

The basin covers about 1.15 million square miles, nearly everything between the Rockies and the Appalachians.

How long does water typically take to travel from the source lake to the Gulf of Mexico?

That works out to about 26 miles a day, or a lazy one mile per hour.

The Great Flood of 1993 mainly hit which stretch of the Mississippi?

It was the upper river and the Missouri that flooded that summer, swamping towns in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.

Which Union general's Vicksburg campaign of 1862-63 completed control of the lower Mississippi?

The city's residents reputedly refused to celebrate the Fourth of July for decades afterwards.