Mississippi River Archives

May 27, 2011September 18, 2011

Down by the Riverside

I wonder how long it’ll take before the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge stops being the “new” bridge and becomes just The Bridge?

I was going to take the night off for the holiday, but ran across these photos from July 28, 2002. It was dusk, both bridges were still standing, barges were running up and down the river and folks were gathering on the waterfront.

Gallery of Waterfront photos

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

Other photos of the waterfront

Here are just a few of the stories and photos taken of Cape’s riverfront.

May 18, 2011March 2, 2021

Stimulus Money Expedites Floodwall Repairs

When I walked the Mississippi River waterfront on April 12, 2011, I noticed some repairs being done to the floodwall. It looked like some vertical concrete columns had been added and that they may have extended down to the footers. It didn’t make enough of an impression on me to shoot more than a few record shots.

Old river gauge

The river was high on this day – 29.65 feet – but it was a long way from showing up on the old Cape river gauge. The Themis flood gate closes at 36 feet; Broadway’s a little higher, so it’s open until 38 feet.

At 39 feet, the Diversion Channel backs up and floods parts of Dutchtown. When it hits 42 feet, over 100,000 acres are flooded, according to the National Weather Service website.

Stimulus expedited repairs

I must have missed the May 1, 2009, Missourian story that announced that the Cape Girardeau floodwall repair project could be finished six to 12 months ahead of schedule thanks to $4 million that was part of the federal stimulus bill approved by Congress in February.

The total project to replace a sagging section of wall, install expansion joints, replace drains, upgrade pumps at Mill Street, add more rock to prevent erosion, pump grout under the wall to stop seepage, and some other incidentals was going to cost about $10 million.

Predictably, there were the normal grousing comments:

“…thanks to the federal stimulus bill…Yeah, they had a few extra bucks laying around that they were kind enough to share. So sweet! That 6 to 12 months gained will take years for our kids to pay for. Thanks kids!”

Replaced 8-foot section of wall

The work I saw was the tail-end of a project to cut expansion joints in the wall. I missed seeing an eight-foot section of the wall taken out. Fred Lynch captured a photo of something not seen since the 1960s – a clear view of the Mississippi River from near Independence Street through the missing panel.

The section that was replaced was near where the wall jogs out in the first photo.

The story quoted the area engineer for the Corps of Engineers’ office in Jackson as saying, “that section needed to be replaced. It had suffered some shifting and something was certainly not right with it.”

Fred’s photo was taken Dec. 6, 2010. Had the stimulus money not sped up the work, that questionable section could have still been in place (or open) when the river hit its fourth highest ever recorded stage of 46.09 feet on May 2. Had it failed, that $4 million would have been a drop in the bucket to what the losses would have been.

Previous high stages

48.49 feet – Aug. 8, 1992

47.00 feet – May 24, 1995
46.90 feet – Aug. 3, 1993
45.70 feet – May 18, 2002
45.50 feet – May 1, 1993

Downtown aerial Apr. 17, 2011

You can see the expansion joint work as the light-colored vertical pieces of the floodwall. The defective section that was replaced is where there’s a slight jog in the wall at the foot of Independence Street. As always, you can click on the image to make it larger.

The new Federal Courthouse is the large brick building to the left of Independence at the top of the photo. Across to its right, at Themis and Frederick, is Trinity Lutheran Church. The picture was taken on a Sunday, so the parking lot is full. The Common Pleas Courthouse is the green area up the riverfront from Themis.

Downtown in the 70s

The KFVS tower, Missourian building and N’Orleans are in the right center of the photo. The land where the courthouse will be built is mostly empty, although you can still see the curve of the railroad tracks where they tied in with Independence at Frederick. The light-colored object in the river on the lower right is the Huckstep fueling dock.

Downtown in the 60s

Obvious changes:

There are a number of things missing – the KFVS tower, for example.
The St. Charles Hotel is still standing.
The Southeast Missourian Tower hasn’t been torn down.
The Idan-Ha Hotel hasn’t burned yet.

April 29, 2011December 27, 2015

Flood Pits Neighbor vs. Neighbor

The controversy over breaching the Bird’s Point levee that’s putting Missourians against Illinoisans isn’t anything new.

A dam erected by farmers in 1967 pitted neighbor against neighbor.

My film envelopes were slugged “Dutchtown Dam 6/22/67,” and I thought the photos were taken south of Hwy 74 between Cape and Dutchtown. The newspaper story, however, describes it as “south of Cape Girardeau and east of old Highway 61 between that highway and the Mississippi River.”

Bits and pieces of the story ran for days. You can read the one that ran with my photo in the June 23, 1967, Missourian.

Farmers on the “wet” side of the dam contended that the structure would cause water from the Diversion channel to back up on their land earlier than it would have normally.

Threats to blow up the dam

The Cape County Sheriff’s office received at least two threats to blow up the dam. Some of the farmers stood guard over the earthen structure at night. At least one of the men in this photo had a rifle or shotgun. I’m going to surmise that it was probably more for snakes than potential bombthrowers.

A story on June 26, said the Little River Drainage District had ordered the dam removed. A flood story on the 27th said it was still standing. A story on June 28 said that attorney Jack O. Knehans was contemplating filing a suit seeking $50,000 to $75,000 in damages from the dam builders.

I scrolled through papers for the next few days and never did find how the issue was resolved.

March 23, 2011April 22, 2021

Greetings from Cape Girardeau

I’m always looking for Cape memorabilia. I think I picked this Souvenir of Cape Girardeau postcard packet at Annie Laurie’s Antiques on one of my recent visits. It could have been mailed for 1.5 cents (without message) when it was new. (Click on any image to make it larger)

Sold at Strom’s News Agency

There’s a tiny note that says Strom’s News Agency, Cape Girardeau, Mo., on this sheet that has all kinds of factoids about Cape. I’m going to guess the information dates back to the late 20s or early 30s.

Bridge, bluffs and steam boats

The Mississippi River Traffic Bridge opened to traffic Aug. 22,1928, so this had to have been published after that.

The rock bluffs have me guessing unless they are on the stretch on South Sprigg south and west of the cement plant. I can’t think of any other bluffs that are that close to the highway on The Kings Highway. I’m not even sure that South Sprigg carried that moniker.

Someone much more ancient that me will have to come up with the last time three steam boats docked on Cape’s riverfront.

Is that the KFVS tower?

These postcards were hand-colored, so the artists had to make assumptions. Unless the facades changed, both the Common Pleas Courthouse and St. Vincent’s College were made of red brick.

The only radio tower that I can think of between Cape and Jackson was the KFVS Radio tower that I photographed in 2009. The one on the postcard doesn’t look like it’s on the crest of the hill but the perspective might be off.

Burfordville, Arena Building and SEMO

The Bollinger Mill and Covered Bridge at Burfordville looks pretty much like when I photographed them last year.

The Arena Building looks pretty much the same, too, but this was years before the Radio-Active Girl Scouts showed up there.

St. Vincent’s, Marquette and SE Hospital

Southeast Hospital certainly has changed a lot since this was taken.

The Marquette Hotel looked pretty close to this in the 60s when it was in the background of a fender-bender I covered at Broadway and Fountain. The artist missed on the color of the facade, though.

St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church has red brick in the real world, too.

St. Francis Hospital long gone

St. Francis Hospital was torn down in 2000.

They must have run out of things to show in Cape, because the rest of the images are from around the Big Springs region.

Curt Teich & Co.

As a photographer, I’m pretty careful about appropriating photos that others have taken because I don’t like mine to get ripped off. In tiny, tiny print there was a note that the Souvenir Folder was © Curt Teich & Co. Figuring the copyright had probably expired – or the company probably had – I Googled the name.

I had seen this style of card over the years, but I didn’t realize exactly how many the company had produced. There’s a whole collection of them that includes images of more than 10,000 cities and towns.