Will the Mississippi River Freeze Over Again
Iii men set up to walk across the river from the foot of Gasconade Street in south St. Louis on February. seven, 1936, afterwards a massive ice jam covered the river. They managed to get across. (Mail-Dispatch)
ST. LOUIS • In late January 1936, cruel cold tormented the Midwest. Lows here fell to minus-x degrees. Coal supplies dwindled. Tardy trains limped into Union Station encrusted with snow. Hobos froze in downtown doorways.
On the Mississippi River, large pancakes of drifting ice crunched confronting bridge piers and boats. South of Cape Girardeau, a solid jam formed in the river and congenital its way upstream. It reached St. Louis on Feb. 6, roofing the river here with a jumble of jagged, snow-covered ice.
Information technology had been that way on the Missouri River at St. Charles since January. 29.
The Army Corps of Engineers warned against crossing the rivers on foot. The foolhardy rarely heed such warnings. People scrambled across the Mississippi on February. 7 at Gasconade Street in southward St. Louis and, a few days afterwards, nearly the Municipal (now MacArthur) Bridge downtown.
The jam reached as far north as the Concatenation of Rocks, where fast river current protected the city's water-system intakes.
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Except for occasional temporary breaks acquired by sudden changes in river level, the jam would agree for almost 3 weeks. On Feb. 27, as it was crumbling, a Humane Society crew lassoed a domestic dog trapped on ice floating virtually Carondelet. The shivering pooch survived.
Wintertime 1936, the tertiary-coldest on record here, had shoved the temperature below zero on a dozen nights. (Underscoring nature's fell whimsy, a grinding rut wave the next summertime killed 421 in St. Louis.)
River lore is filled with tales of daring people getting across without assist of bridges during hard winters. In 1873, equus caballus teams crossed near the Eads Bridge, withal nether construction. Two winters later, saloonkeeper Chris Hilliflicker raised a tent halfway across, warmed it with a coal stove and poured bracers for chilled pilgrims. In 1881, breweries dispatched teams onto the river to cut blocks of ice. Twelve years, later, coal wagons went by river to avoid the span toll.
The river froze over at St. Louis at least 10 times from 1831 to 1938, when completion of the Alton Lock and Dam corralled much of the water ice from the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers.
Better weather condition often brought peril on the revived river. Disintegrating jams destroyed riverboats and freed surges of h2o. On Jan. five, 1928, Henry Thron and John Parker were set afloat on a Wiggins Co. ferry downtown when suddenly shifting water ice snapped its moorings. They were rescued with ropes almost Arsenal Street.
Icing is a chance of the river trade and a regular event on the upper reaches. Hefty water ice cakes hamper barge traffic and, when it'south cold enough, even so jam narrow points below St. Louis.
10 times the Mississippi River froze over in St. Louis
Mississippi River Water ice
The Wiggins Co. ferry William Ruprecht on the St. Louis levee, north of the Municipal (later MacArthur) Bridge on Jan. 6, 1928, hemmed in by an water ice jam on the Mississippi River. Water ice completely covered the river that wintertime, as information technology did at least ten times from 1831 to 1936. (Mail service-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
Ice almost completely covers the river, looking n from the St. Louis Levee toward the Eads Span, on January. 30, 1931. The electric current managed to move the ice. (Post-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
People walking across the frozen Mississippi River from East St. Louis to St. Louis on Feb. 12, 1936. The Municipal (after MacArthur) Bridge piers are in the background. (Lou Phillips/Post-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
R. D. Schmickle of the U.S. Geological Survey prepares to operate a device that measures the speed of the Mississippi'due south current on Feb. 22, 1936. He is lowering the torpedo-shaped instrument into a hole cut into the river ice atop the middle of the aqueduct. (Mail service-Dispatch)
Expect Back: Mississippi River Ice
U.Due south. Geological Survey engineers measure current over the channel on Feb. 22, 1936, near the human foot of Davis Street, in Carondelet. (Postal service-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
A man examines some of the chunks of ice along the St. Louis riverfront on February. 26, 1936, after the ice jam across the Misssissippi river began breaking up. (Post-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Water ice
The breakup of the ice jam on Feb. 26, 1936, mangled the Missouri Pacific Railroad approach to a ferry landing at the foot of Davis Street, in Carondelet. The ferry ran to East Carondelet, Ill. (Post-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
Ice jams the river and the lock at the old Alton Lock and Dam No. 26 on Feb. eleven, 1940. The city of Alton is across the river in this aeriform photograph taken from the Missouri side. Completion of the dam in 1937 permanently slowed the flow of water ice from the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers, although Missouri River ice continues to menstruum unabated by St. Louis. The Melvin Price Lock and Dam, defended downstream from the old dam in 1994, dutifully continues to hold dorsum ice. (East. J. Burkhardt/Post-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Water ice
People stand on ice in the river away from the St. Louis riverbank near the Municipal (MacArthur) Bridge, circa 1940. (Harry Hoffman/Post-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Water ice
A towboat pushes three barges slowly through ice jamming the Mississippi River just above the Alton Lock and Dam in February 1949. A thaw had cleaved loose ice along the river above Alton, and the loose and jagged chunks drifted downstream to into the Alton pool. (Arthur Witman/Mail-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
Clomp tows stalled by water ice on the Mississippi River, just above Alton, on Jan. 28, 1955. (Lloyd Spainhower/Post-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
Illinois River water ice merges with Mississippi River water ice at their confluence almost Elsah, Ill., nestled in a valley in the bluffs on the lower left. The campus of Principia College is visible on top of the bluff. (Renyold Ferguson/Post-Acceleration)
Mississippi River Water ice
Ice cakes float downstream, most filling the Mississippi River simply beneath the Eads Bridge on Jan. 23, 1959. The excursion gunkhole S.Due south. Admiral and the old railroad trestle along Wharf Street (now Leonor Chiliad. Sullivan Boulevard) are in the background. (Jack January/Post-Acceleration)
Mississippi River Ice
A harbor tug, left, and a bigger towboat grind their mode through ice at the upstream entance to the lock at the Alton Lock and Dam in early March 1960. At correct is a clomp stuck in the ice. (Robert Graul/Post-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
Ice cakes migrate downstream below the Eads Bridge on Jan 23, 1962. The view is from in a higher place the Illinois riverbank, with the MacArthur Span in the background. (Jack Jan/Post-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
Three barges locked in ice on the Mississippi River to a higher place the Alton Lock and Dam on February. eight, 1962. The view is toward the Missouri riverbank. (Renyold Ferguson/Mail-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Ice
Barges are caught in ice jamming the canal puddle leading to the Chain of Rocks Lock 27 at Granite Metropolis on Jan. 23, 1963. The aeriform view is to the south, toward St. Louis. (Renyold Ferguson/Postal service-Dispatch)
Mississippi River Water ice
Ice encrusts the Illinois riverbank and floats downstream in the Mississippi River on Jan. 29, 1966, every bit a cold wave assaults St. Louis. Information technology was -8 degrees at eight a.m. The Gateway Arch, which had been topped three months earlier, still had the construction cranes that crawled up the legs on special tracks to build the Arch. Other cranes are atop the Mansion House towers nether construction downtown. (Lou Phillips/Mail-Acceleration)
Mississippi River Ice
A towboat grinds through water ice to a higher place the Alton Lock and Dam on Feb. 12, 1966, to reach and clear some of the xvi barges that were fix afloat and then locked by an ice jam. The helicopter resting on a barge in the foreground had delivered a pump to drain water from some of the barges, all of which held grain. (Scott C. Dine/Mail service-Acceleration)
Read more stories from Tim O'Neil's Wait Dorsum series.
Source: https://www.stltoday.com/news/archives/the-day-st-louisans-walked-across-the-frozen-mississippi-river/article_2172efb3-0ec9-559c-b708-e4a8faa06481.html