THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER STOOD AT THE CENTER, literally and figuratively, of the United States’s westward expansion during the nineteenth century. By far the most prominent name in taming the powerful river was James Buchanan Eads. From the 1830s through the 1850s this supremely capable engineer salvaged hundreds of wrecks with a series of ever-larger diving bells, gaining in the process an intimate knowledge of the river’s bottom.
James Buchanan Eads
Summer 1997 | Volume 13, Issue 1
THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER STOOD AT THE CENTER, literally and figuratively, of the United States’s westward expansion during the nineteenth century. By far the most prominent name in taming the powerful river was James Buchanan Eads. From the 1830s through the 1850s this supremely capable engineer…