“WILD MISSOURI SWEEPS VALLEY — A River Gone Mad — 100,000 Persons Homeless in Nation’s Worst Domestic Disaster” was the headline in The Frontier of O’Neill, Nebraska on Thursday, April 17, 1952.
“Where does one begin to write a story about a sullen, chocolate brown monster,” wrote Cal Steward, Editor of The Frontier “that roars down one of the world’s most fertile valleys, leaving thousands of families homeless and prostrate, inundating countless farms, spreading sheer destruction, devastation and destruction that defy description?”
He continued in his front-page story with this simple statement: “Frankly, I don’t know. But the story must be chronicled in every journal in the land because it’s the story of the century in domestic American history.”
Mr. Stewart set out on a 400-water-logged-mile tour of the battlefront on the Easter weekend to report on the unmerciful tragedy we today simply call the “1952 Flood.” When he left O’Neill that weekend, the weather was windy, cold and ugly and befitted the attitude of the unholy Big Mo. He referred to it as “that clumsy, cruel, unpredictable and despicable Frankenstein that we prairielanders know little about.”
Throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, Americans gave the Missouri River a variety of nicknames which were designed to describe, succinctly, the environmental character of the river. Fur trappers, settlers, travelers, and explorers referred to it as the Big Muddy, the Mighty Mo, the Wide Missouri, and Old Misery.
Robert Schneiders, in his book UNRULY RIVER; Two Centuries of Change Along the Missouri wrote:
“Big Muddy denoted the river’s water, the Mighty Mo acknowledged its incredible power, especially during floods; the Wide Missouri described the great width of the river as it flowed through the Dakotas, and past eastern Nebraska, western Iowa, eastern Kansas, and Missouri; Old Misery expressed the sufferings of thousands of individuals who had lost loved ones or property to the stream.”
“A number of popular sayings also characterized the river,” he continued. “Valley residents said it behaved like a transient because it spent every night in a different bed; others asserted that farmers with crops in the bottomlands never knew whether they would harvest corn in the fall or a stringer full of catfish. Missouri Valley inhabitants declared the river’s water too thick to drink and too thin to plow.”
The Missouri River quickly assumed an important part in the folklore and history of the Missouri River Basin. The Missouri River was one of the main routes for the westward expansion of the United States during the 19th century. It began with the development and growth of the fur trade in the last part of the 18th and early part of the 19th centuries. They laid much of the groundwork as trappers explored the rivers and streams in the region and blazed the trails.
They had already established the fur trading business when Lewis and Clark first arrived in South Dakota on August 21, 1804. At nine o’clock that Tuesday morning, Captain Clark stood on the top of War Eagle hill (you see it directly in front of you as you are driving into Sioux City on Interstate #29 from the north) and for the first time looked upon the lower valley of the Big Sioux River, the windings of the Missouri through the alluvial plain between Sioux City and Elk Point and all that unrivaled landscape that welcomes travelers into the Sunshine State.
Pioneers headed west from the Missouri en masse beginning in the 1830s, first by covered wagon, then by the growing numbers of steamboats that entered service on the river.
The Missouri River is the 4th longest river in the world (Nile, Amazon, and Yangtze are longer) and the longest river in the United States. According to the United States Geological Survey, the Missouri is 200 miles longer than the Mississippi.
The Missouri River Basin spans 529,350 square miles and encompasses nearly one-sixth of the area of the United States or just over five percent of the continent of North America. The watershed encompasses most of the central Great Plains. It stretches from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River Valley in the east and from the southern extreme of western Canada to the border of the Arkansas River watershed.
John Neihardt, essayist and intimate observer of the Missouri long before massive engineering projects transformed it, wrote:
“The Missouri is unique among rivers. I think God wished to teach the beauty of a virile soul fighting its way toward peace — and His precept was the Missouri.”
The Missouri River defined the American frontier in the 19th century, particularly upstream from Kansas City. All of the major trails for the opening and exploration of the American West had their starting points on the river, including the California, Mormon, Oregon, and Santa Fe trails. The first westward leg of the Pony Express was a ferry ride across the Missouri at St. Joseph, Missouri. The first westward leg of the First Transcontinental Railroad was a ferry ride across the Missouri between Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska.
The Hannibal Bridge was the first bridge to cross the Missouri and into Kansas City in 1869. This was the major reason for Kansas City becoming the largest city on the river upstream from its mouth at St. Louis. So, next time you cheer for the “Chiefs” or “Royals,” think of the Hannibal Bridge.
Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on April 26, 2023