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John Anfinson’s new book offers a compelling analysis of the technological and environmental history of the upper Mississippi River and fills a gap in the historiography of rivers in the United States. Other rivers, notably the Columbia, Colorado, and Tennessee, as well as the lower Mississippi, have drawn much scholarly attention. Anfinson has now given us a first-rate study of the Mississippi north of St. Louis. The main topic is the growing control of the river by the Army Corps of Engineers (and, to a lesser extent, other agencies) from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Anfinson does not attempt to bring the story up to the present, acknowledging that the crowded developments since 1940 deserve a separate book. His central thread concerns the ways in which residents pushed the federal government to improve the upper Mississippi River for navigation so that grain, lumber, coal, and other commodities could be shipped cheaply downriver. In 1878, Congress took the first step by authorizing the Corps to establish a 4-foot channel. In subsequent years, the Corps built wing and closing dams and lined the shore with riprap. Congress approved a 6-foot channel in 1907 and a 9-foot channel in 1930, an undertaking that employed thousands during the Great Depression in building almost two dozen more dams. Anfinson deftly analyzes the political coalitions of farmers, businesspeople, municipalities, and boosters that pressured reluctant Congresses to fund these channels. While the coalitions shifted, their common motive was to gain liberation from railroads, notorious in many quarters for their high shipping rates. In 1887, Congress authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate rates, but the commission proved weak and too closely tied to the railroad interests it was supposedly regulating. As a result, determination to transform the river into an economically viable transportation corridor mounted. Such determination, though successful in bringing about navigation improvements, did not lead to increasing use of the river. In fact, shipping declined steadily in the early twentieth century, owing largely to rapid depletion of forests in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. As traffic dwindled, the challenge of winning more funding for navigation improvements became greater, but proponents kept finding reasons to badger the Corps and Congress. The River We Have Wrought does more than trace navigation improvements. Anfinson also carefully examines environmental changes that such improvements caused. Construction of the 6-foot channel, for example, enT E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U L T U R E

The River We Have Wrought: a History of the Upper Mississippi