Mississippi River Archives

June 27, 2012

Mississippi River Panoramas

This was the week for shooting panoramas of the Mississippi River. Friends Bob and Claire Rogers are walking to the very tip of Illinois where the Ohio (left) and Mississippi rivers join at Fort Defiance. The Mississippi must be running slightly higher, because you can see that it is holding the Ohio back. Click on the photos to make them larger.

There are seven frames stitched together by Photoshop in this panorama. What’s amazing is that Bob and Claire were walking away from me when I swept the scene, so they appeared in two photos and different locations. The program was smart enough to know that there’s only one Bob and Claire in the world and not to duplicate them.

View from Trail of Tears

The overlook at the Trail of Tears State Park offers a beautiful view of the river. While we were there, we spotted a guy in a rowboat making his way downstream. The way his gear was packed, we figured his destination was New Orleans.

“If he lands in Cape,” I commented to my friends, “I wonder who is working the Huck Finn Beat now that I’m gone.”

This was made of five frames.

June 7, 2012

Moon Over Mississippi River

Cops say “You can’t outrun Motorola.” I learned this evening in the ’60s that you can’t outrun the moon, either.

I don’t know exactly where I was when I spotted the full moon coming up over the horizon, but I knew I wanted to get the golden orb pulling itself out of the muck of the Mississippi River. I flogged all the horses under the hood of my ’59 Buick, but the moon kept getting higher and higher and smaller and smaller.

I shot this from Cape Rock. I hope I didn’t interrupt anybody or anything when I went skidding in squealing tires and throwing up a cloud of dust. I was disappointed enough with the result that I didn’t bother to print it.

I have a moon fixation

It surprised me when I did a quick search for moon stories in my two blogs. There’s a batch of them.

May 25, 2012

Cobbles on a Rainy Night

The headline tells it all. Taken August 3, 1967. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

On the other side of the tracks

Well, maybe on the other side of the floodwall and in the MIDDLE of the tracks. Night view looking south on October 26, 2009.

The Mississippi River and the railroads shaped Cape Girardeau in the 19th and 20th centuries. Because of the western migration, it’s unlikely that the majority of Cape Girardeans hear the mournful whistles of the towboats and trains passing by and through the city.

If you’re feeling you’ve been left a little short with just these two photos, here’s a sampler from earlier that has a bunch of Cape pictures, including ones of the riverfront and bridge. Here’s a place where you can see photos I’ve linked to Pinterest.

April 30, 2012May 24, 2015

Location, Location, Location

These shots were on the rolls with the photos Jeane Adams I used for the End of Summer story. Some of her photos were taken at Cape Rock, so that explains the towboat photo. The Mississippi River looks almost as low as it was last fall. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Google is a wonderful thing. I blew the picture up large enough to be able to see that the towboat was The Albert M. of B & M Towing. A search found that the craft has been built by St. Louis Shipbuilding and Steel Company of St. Louis, located on the site at the foot of East Davis Street in the Carondelet section of St. Louis, where James B. Eads built the Union Navy’s gunboats during the Civil War. It was called the Rohan Boat, Boiler & Tank Company when it was acquired by Herman Pott in 1933 and renamed St. Louis Shipbuilding & Steel Co. It closed in 1984.

Research by someone named Ingo Steller said that the The Albert M. was built in 1965, so it was fairly new when it passed Cape Rock in September of 1966. It was renamed the The Liz Brent, and, most recently, rebranded as The City of Greenville.

Here’s a launch of a towboat I covered in in 1965 or ’66.

Dennis Scivally’s bridge

I had to smile a little when I saw this frame of the stone bridge in Dennis Scivally Park. At least three Facebook friends posted photos of that bridge on their Facebook pages today. It has to be one of the most-photographed landmarks in town since it was built in 1941. Here’s what the park looked like about this time last year.

For some reason, I didn’t shoot anything of Jeane in the park. There’s no telling why you get a feeling for a place on one day and not another.

Beating the heat

I guess I couldn’t persuade my model to hop on this cow cooling off in a pond. Looks a lot like the ones trying to keep from melting in Perry County last summer.