The Mississippi used to run where the Illinois does
now. Ice age or something changed it.
As the glaciers covering northeast North America melted off, the Great Lakes were for a time one giant lake which drained to the south through the Mississippi, Illinois, Wabash, and I think, the Miami and Scioto, and upper Ohio valleys.
There was an earthquake in the
1800s that made the Mississippi run backwards for days creating Reelfoot
Lake. It also cut around a town and made it an island closer to Missouri
than Illinois. At one time the town had been considered for the state
capital.
You're talking about the New Madrid earthquake(s) in 1812. There's an interesting book on the subject published by a couple of professors at SEMO in Cape Girardeau, David Stewart and Ray Knox, entitled The Earthquake That Never Went Away (it details earthquake features which remain today - sandboils, bluffs, and of course, Reelfoot Lake). There was also a waterfall created on the Mississippi at the time, though it quickly eroded away.
Also on the subject of the Mississippi moving, I know at one time the river went through the Thebes cutoff and flowed through southeast Missouri and eastern Arkansas. The Ohio turned south at the present location of Cairo and the two rivers joined somewhere around Memphis. I'm not sure what caused the movement of the Mississippi into it's present bed between Thebes and Cairo. Perhaps that was caused by an earlier earthquake(?). The quakes they have in this region today are very mild, though there will be another big one someday. |
