must break bulk and be carried in wagons to their destination. A lock and dam, the state contended, would extend navigation to its natural and proper terminus.76. To prove their point, they paid the steamer Lamartine $200 to journey from St. Paul to the cataract. . Kelley and Grangers in the upper Mississippi River valley saw the river as an essential route to domestic and foreign markets. Bison Bridge over Mississippi River could be boon for the heartland He questioned the value of removing boulders, believing that the steep grade and rapid current required locks and dams. The works built under the 41/2-foot channel project embody these national movements and local efforts. From the quarterboats you could hear the big rocks hitting each other, like a rapid-fire rage. Just below this mantle lay a soft sandstone layer. By authorizing the 41/2-foot channel project, Congress directed the Corps to remake the upper Mississippi. The Windom Committee Spurred by the Granger movement and navigation conventionspartly out of fear and partly out of a genuine concern to help farmers and businessesMinnesota Senator William Windom asked the Senate to establish a committee to examine the transportation problem and recommend solutions to it. House Ex. Photo by Brady. Midwestern farmers sent grain to Chicago, and Chicago merchants and eastern manufacturers sent their goods back on the railroads. . But, as a result of the economic panic beginning that year, a number of unprecedented droughts and the Civil War, navigation, they brashly claimed, had receded some sixteen miles, to St. Paul, where all the freight destined to these cities, (Minneapolis and St. Anthony) and the vast regions north and west . Instead of going to St. Louis or New Orleans, a steamboat from St. Paul might unload at La Crosse or Rock Island or at other railheads, and increasingly, most river commerce became local.41, While the river had been hauling grain since the birth of Midwestern agriculture, railroads held too many advantages over the undeveloped waterways. Gary F. Browne, The Railroads: Terminals and Nexus Points in the Upper Mississippi Valley, (in John S. Wozniak ed., Historic Lifestyles in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, (New York: University Press of America, 1983), p. 84, says the first railroad reached the Mississippi River at Rock Island on February 22, 1854. Below the island, no deep channel existed at low water. This is a list of all current and notable former bridges or other crossings of the Upper Mississippi River which begins at the Mississippi River's source and extends to its confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. To secure their objective, the company needed support from businessmen in Minneapolis, and for that support, Minneapolis interests won back control of the company. Compatibility between rail lines made transshipment unnecessary. The project would permanently reshape the river between Lock and Dam 1 (the Ford Dam) and St. Anthony Falls. Planters were those that became lodged in the river's bottom, and sleepers hid beneath the water's surface.