Significance
Two Mississippi contributes to several well-established traditions of scholarship:
It contributes to our understanding of vernacular landscapes, suggesting our ordinary landscapes, and how we construct and use them, reveal important things about our identity as Midwesterners and Americans (Meinig 1979; Jackson 1997; Wyckoff 2014).
It adds a new methodology (detailed below) to the repeat photography literature, much of which has previously focused on grand rural or urban landscapes (Klett 2004; Wyckoff 2006; Amundson 2014).
It adds important details, depth, and complexity to what has been published on the Upper Mississippi (Tweet 1984; O’Brien et al 1992; Anfinson 2003; Schneider 2014).
It contributes to our understanding of federal landscape management, power, and change in America’s public lands (Scott 1998; Hays 1999; 2009) and adds a Midwestern case study to this literature, which has previously has focused largely on the American West (Nash 1985; Hirt 1994; Nie 2008).
Two Mississippi tells four intertwined stories about the post-Depression Upper Mississippi River:
First, it visually documents the human, cultural, and ecological change in the Upper Mississippi over time. The image pairings, through repeat photography, tell powerful stories about what existed, what survives, what changes, and what disappears. Photo sets 1) detail the shift in human use and community along the Upper Mississippi since the 9-foot project; 2) detail the shift in the Upper Mississippi’s natural and ecological landscapes since the 9-foot project; and 3) reveal the “ghosts” in the landscape by pairing photos with oral histories of those who once lived, worked, and used these landscapes.
A second and related story is how the Upper Mississippi River has changed as social and economic space. What once was a largely a series of small agricultural communities connected by riverfront towns, schools, churches, and waterfronts has given way to a recreation dominated landscape of summer cabins, duck-hunting blinds, and public boat docks. Industry on small town waterfronts has, in the large, withered since the 9-foot project as the deep-water barges that move up and down the Upper Mississippi cannot dock at small town marinas. This element of the project looks at the changing place identities of the landscapes photographed by the Army Corps and uses archival materials, oral history, and participant observation to trace the social and economic path of these communities.
Two Mississippi also explores the role of the Army Corps as an agent of increased federal largesse and cultural and ecological change in post-Depression America. The rich photographic archive invites the reader to understand what the Army Corps valued as it anticipated taking control of thousands of acres of land to maintain a commercially viable 9-foot channel. Historical archival data underpin this research and tell the story of an agency that grew exponentially in order to implement a project that could only be made possible by removing thousands of local communities and altering the ecological functionality of the river itself. Agency narratives are intertwined with photo sets and connects this agency story with a human and ecological one that is set amidst larger narratives about visual changes in the landscape.
Finally, Two Mississippi tells an important and under appreciated story about regional change in the American Midwest. Two Mississippi is a work of Midwestern history and geography. It offers an opportunity to study one of the region’s (and nation’s) dominant and most important natural and human landscapes and its evolution over time. As a work of regional historical geography, Two Mississippi connects us to past Midwestern landscapes and communities, how post-Depression federal largesse and global economic systems have contributed to cultural and ecological change in the region, and how relationships with this landscape still inform a distinct regional identity.
Selected Bibliography:
Amundson, Michael. 2014. WYOMING REVISITED. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Anfinson, John O. 2003. THE RIVER WE HAVE WROUGHT: A History of the Upper Mississippi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hays, Samuel P. 1999. CONSERVATION AND THE GOSPEL OF EFFICIENCY: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
_____. 2009. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE & THE NATIONAL FORESTS: The First Century of the U.S. Forest Service. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hirt, Paul. 1994. A CONSPIRACY OF OPTIMISM: Management of the National Forests since World War Two. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Jackson, John Brinckerhoff. 1997. LANDSCAPE IN SIGHT. New Haven: Yale Press.
Klett, Mark. 2004. THIRD VIEWS, SECOND SIGHTS: A Rephotographic Survey of the American West. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press.
Meinig, Donald, ed. 1979. THE INTERPRETATION OF ORDINARY LANDSCAPES. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nash, Gerald D. 1985. THE AMERICAN WEST TRANSFORMED: The Impact of the Second World War. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Nie, Martin. 2008. THE GOVERNANCE OF WESTERN PUBLIC LANDS: Mapping its Present and Future. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.
O’Brien, William Patrick, Mary Yeater Rathbun, and Patrick O’Bannon. 1993. GATEWAYS TO COMMERCE: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 9-foot Channel Project on the Upper Mississippi River. Denver: National Parks Service, Rocky Mountain Division.
Schneider, Paul. 2014. OLD MAN RIVER: The Mississippi River in North American History. New York: Picador.
Scott, James C. 1998. SEEING LIKE A STATE: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Tweet. Roald. 1984. A HISTORY OF THE ROCK ISLAND DISTRICT, US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, 1866-1983. Rock Island, IL: Rock Island District of the Army Corps of Engineers.
Wyckoff, William. 2006. ON THE ROAD AGAIN: Montana’s Changing Landscape. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
_____. 2014. HOW TO READ THE AMERICAN WEST: A Field Guide. Seattle: University of Washington Press.