June 21, 2001
This morning we went on a guided walk to the headwaters of
the Mississippi River. Here are some factoids:
The Mississippi is 2552 river
miles long from the headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. Only the Nile and Amazon
rivers are longer. If you consider facts other than length, technically the
Mississippi River should be considered to be a tributary of the Missouri
River!
The river starts here at 1452
feet above sea level. If a raindrop fell here at the headwaters it would take
90 days for it to end up in the Gulf of Mexico (as long as it didn’t evaporate
first). And that tiny little raindrop would first flow NORTH out of Lake
Itasca! Not South!
The line from the headwaters of
the Mississippi River north to the Lake of the Woods was used as the boundary
of the Old Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin,
and the part of Minnesota which is east of the river). The rest of Minnesota
became part of the United States when the Louisiana Purchase was acquired.
The headwaters were charted and
named by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft on July 13, 1832. Pretty amazing when you
consider that the search for the source started in 1541 when the Spanish
Conquistadors discovered the mouth of the Mississippi!
Itasca State Park was
established in 1891 with help from the Ojibwe Indians. If you say Ojibwe with
a heavy accent on the JIB then
you will hear the white man’s name for this Indian tribe: the Chippewa! The
name “Itasca” comes from the Latin phrase “Veritas caput” meaning “true head”.
And “Mississippi” is a Native American word for “river spread over a large
area”.
The mouth of the North Arm of
Lake Itasca is considered the headwaters even though there are streams that
empty into the lake. Our guide told us that none of those streams are big
enough to be considered a “true river”, so their endpoints cannot be
considered to be the headwaters. It was a bit difficult to understand, but we
think there must have been a lot of politics driving the decision to designate
this spot (rather than any of the others) as the headwaters.
The river flows year round, even
when the surface is frozen. At the headwaters it is about 30 feet across and
the thing to do is to take off your shoes and “wade across the Mississippi”!
Neither of us felt like we needed to do that. We took a few pictures
instead!
Later that afternoon, Scott went grocery shopping with
Kevin. The nearest grocery store is about 20 miles south of here. Lise, quite
hoarse and suffering with a sore throat, rested first and fixed her lusciously
loaded pasta salad for the potluck/cookout tonight.
What a feast! Brats, hotdogs, chicken breasts, and pork
tenderloins were cooked over an open fire with Ed Emerick’s cool pivoting
grill. Kevin Allen made his famous Bonfire Baked Beans. There was sauerkraut,
ambrosia fruit salad (minus the coconut, thank you Sandy Emerick!), brownies,
and pineapple upside down cake made by Mary Ann Chellman. We were all way too
stuffed for our own good! Definitely happy campers!!
As we sat around the fire after the cookout, we heard the
loons out on the Lake. Definitely a good day!
--Scott & Lise Scheuermann
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