The River We Have Wrought: A History of the Upper Mississippi (review)

In The River We Have Wrought, Anfinson examines the last two centuries of human-environment interaction on the upper Mississippi. He contends that today's Mississippi is the result of a long sequence of human actions, and that only by understanding this sequence can people make good decisions about balancing economics and ecosystems.

Anfinson begins his study by describing the natural river, a complex system of backwaters, banks, bottoms, and floodplains. In the 1820s, the first steamboat navigators who braved the river encountered countless sandbars, snags, and rapids. In their subsequent efforts to tame the muddy waters and make them usable, inhabitants cleared riverbanks, dredged bottoms, and erected dams. After the Civil War, the nation required a waterway that could support a region on the rise, and Congress approved funding for a 4-foot channel. Even with the channel, the erratic river continued to limit shipping. In the 1870s, a movement for a deeper channel gained considerable momentum when Grangers turned their attention to water transport as a way of breaking railroads' power. In 1878, after much local pressure, the federal government approved a 41/2-foot channel, and shortly thereafter a 6-foot channel.

In the 1910s, with the demise of its main source of traffic (the Midwestern timber industry), the waterway ceased to capture politicians' imaginations and purses, and enthusiasm for navigation projects ebbed. Moreover, many in the nascent conservation movement came to view the river not as a highway for goods but as a corridor for wildlife and recreation. Nevertheless, the idea of a deeper channel resurfaced in the 1920s, when rural America found itself mired in recession. The channel appealed simultaneously to cost-obsessed farmers, small-town boosters, neopopulist politicians, and a White House averse to the notion of handouts. In 1930, Congress authorized a 9-foot channel, but before the project was funded, the Izaak Walton League launched a campaign to stop it. Despite this campaign and opposition from the Army Corps of Engineers, channel supporters won out in the end. By 1940, humans had changed the river, but the transformed waterway fell well short of both boosters' greatest hopes and conservationists' worst fears.

Anfinson succeeds in showing the importance of navigation in shaping the Mississippi. To make his case, he draws from a variety of sources, including early travelers' accounts, shipping records, Congressional testimony, scientific studies, and trade and association publications. Well-versed in the fields that overlap with history to create environmental history, Anfinson demonstrates an impressive command of river dynamics, ecosystems, transportation systems, and public policy. He aptly concludes his study by pondering the Mississippi's current predicament. He offers no solution but notes that the success or failure of environmental restoration projects will determine whether navigation and ecosystems can coexist.

As his title suggests, Anfinson casts humans as responsible for the river's transformation. It is hard to contest this point. At times, however, his emphasis on human actions detracts from his presentation of the river as an agent. He misses some of the river's great moments, such as the twentieth-century floods. The flood of 1993, which engulfed the nation's mid-section, not only showed the Mississippi's might but also demonstrated that floods could drive debates. Anfinson's decision to conclude his study in 1940 weakens his efforts to address the present. Contemporary environmentalism and flood-control projects, especially on the river's tributaries, have shaped the waterway. Questions of scope and coverage aside, however, this insightful study successfully captures the complex ways in which human and natural systems flow together.