Man verses River: Man Wins!

I have just finished Part 1 and there are a few big ideas I want to discuss, but first I wanted to touch on the concept of technology in the book thus far. Part 1 revolves around the lives of some prominent engineers around the 1840s to 1870s. This was an era of scientific progress and hubris, when nature was deemed subject to the rules of man's science. Darwin's Origin of Species, steel, the telegraph, Pasteur's microbiological research--all coincided with the American Civil War, the steady expansion of the railroad, and the expansion (west) and unification (north-south) of a nation. The Mississippi River played a gigantic role in the evolution of the US. Barry does an excellent job exalting the mightiness of the river: as a powerful ecosystem, capable of creating, enriching, and destroying land; as a massive highway network absolutely vital to the growing manufacturing industries in the northeast, the plantation export industry in the south, and the taming and settling of the west; and as a significant threat to thousands of square miles of fertile lands with increasing population density.
With a river so important for the economic, political, commercial, and military viability of the country, coupled with the legacy of West Point, the Army Corps of Engineers was the authority on what to do with the river. Why do anything to the river? Because it is there! And as Men we must do things with it! But, more seriously, as people continued to populate the country, floods were becoming more and more disastrous, regularly capturing the national attention in newspaper headlines. Floods are an obvious issue, but other problems involved sandbars that would develop at the mouth of the river, impeding bigger and bigger ships from transporting in bigger and bigger loads. As the reach of trains crept farther west, bridges were increasingly necessary, pitting railroad proponents against the steamboat industry.

I found it interesting the "choices" available to the engineers working with rivers in those days. So I thought I'd list them with pictures:
-bridges, getting bigger for trains, experimenting with steel, tended to collapse in early 19th century
-levees: 1) had been built away from river shore, to allow space for flooding, but this worsened force against the levee walls if river overflowed; 2) eventually built along river shore to encourage powerful current to scour the bottom of the river, increase speed of river, and thereby reduce flood
-man-made cutoffs, to ease river navigation, increase speed of current (click for video model)
-jetties, to extend mouth of river and disrupt sandbar formation
-reservoirs and river outlets, to contain water during high river levels and floods
-dredging to eliminate sandbars

All of these techniques were complicated by quickly evolving technology, materials, and knowledge about Mississippi river hydraulics.

In my next entry, however, I will discuss how the science of engineering was further complicated by the path dependence of centralized power.