Mom and I were looking through some old photos a couple months ago. They were from the Schnick farm in about 1920. Most showed farm scenes and people. There were several pictures of women in white dresses on a picnic on one of the bluffs.

Then the photographer, probably Ben Schnick, did a very good thing, and turned his camera toward the river and took the picture shown here.

Itís taken from the bluff just to the north of Shellhorn. The road you see bottom right is Highway 26, south of Shellhorn. You can see the railroad tracks parallel to it.

Whatís amazing to me is how different the river looks. For one thing, the main channel, known as Raft Channel, hugs the Minnesota shore, then jogs to the east around a big spit of land in front of where Valiree Green now lives.

That whole stretch of river, with all its timber and islands and sloughs, is now pretty much an open expanse of water, thanks to Lock and Dam number eight at Genoa, Wisconsin.

That dam and 28 others were built as part of the Nine-Foot Channel Project. Most were built in the 1930s. The Genoa dam was built from 1934-1937. When this photo was taken, the Main Channel was kept at a depth of six feet as Congress authorized in 1907. This act authorized 2,000 additional wing dams, dredging, and dams at locks at Keokuk and LeClaire, Iowa.

When the locks and dams were constructed, the water rose and the lower ends of each pool were inundated. The beautiful bottomland shown in this photo slowly disappeared.

I remember my Uncle Donny telling me that the Genoa dam took away a good chunk of Heiller farmland, which is barely visible in the upper right hand part of this photo. He wasnít real happy about that. It wasnít great farmland, being susceptible to flooding, but it provided timber and hayfields and pasture.

I bet people like Donny were upset with the project for recreational and aesthetic reasons too. When I see photos like this, I want to hop in the canoe and go fish and explore. The river was more like a wilderness then. Imagine the Reno Bottoms extending all the way up and down the river. Thatís what it was like.

Calvin R. Fremling gives an excellent account of this (and much more) in his book, Immortal River. ìPrior to the inundation in the 1934-1940 period, the river bottoms were primarily wooded islands separated by deep, running sloughs. Hundreds of small lakes and ponds were scattered through the wooded bottoms. Bay meadows and small farming operations, mainly haying and grazing, occupied some areas on larger islands,î he writes at the start of a chapter called ìThe Glory Years.î

Some good things, besides improved commerce, did come out of the damming of the river, Fremling says. One thing I like is that it converted ownership from private to public. ìIn an era when ëno trespassingí signs were becoming increasingly prevalent, it made the lands available, in perpetuity, for public use,î Fremling notes. Anyone who uses the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge can be thankful for that.

The Nine-Foot Channel Project also controlled flooding, and enhanced the opportunities for recreational boating. It increased more fish-food organisms and more fish because the riverís surface had increased exposure to the sunís energy.

This is just some of the great information in Fremlingís excellent book. Itís like a Bible of river history, geology, and science. I couldnít recommend a book more highly.

But Iíll still reminisce about a river I never knew, one my great-uncle Ben captured so many years ago. I know, time marches on, progress is good, people are starving in China, blah blah blah. But we still should remember that we lost a tremendous resource right in our front yard when the river was dammed.

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