In this episode, we continue our detour along the Missouri River with part 2 of my conversation with Steve Schnarr from Missouri River Relief. In part two, Steve describes the process the Corps of Engineers used to channelize the river, how it changed the river, what we lost, and how some folks gained new land. He talks about a Missouri River bridge that was built over land, and about the hopes for commercial navigation on the Missouri River that just never seem to realize.
We talk about the growing community of Missouri River paddlers and the special relationship between residents of river towns and the Missouri River. Steve offers a few tips on places to visit the Missouri River, including a couple of areas where you can check out remnants of the old river. We finish with a description of the mission of Missouri River Relief and their big annual event, the race known as the MR340.
Show Notes
Missouri River Relief on Instagram
Missouri National Recreational River
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Transcript
Sun, Jun 15, 2025 12:02PM • 48:45
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Missouri River, channelization, Corps of Engineers, recreation, paddling community, Mr. 340 race, river cleanups, Missouri River relief, wildlife refuge, sandbars, commercial navigation, flood events, river history, river culture, river education.
SPEAKERS
Steve Schnarr, Dean Klinkenberg
Steve Schnarr 00:00
I love Glasgow to Boonville. There’s this S curve in the river that goes through Jameson Island Unit of the Big Muddy Wildlife Refuge in the Lisbon Bottoms Unit of the Big Muddy Wildlife Refuge. This, this S curve really just got obliterated in the ’93 flood. And it all was purchased to be part of the Big Muddy and there’s remnants of of shoots, some built by some, you know, recreated by floods, and some created by the Corps of Engineers as habitat that really just add this wild feel to this stretch of the river. And there’s some giant sand bars. I I just love that area, and Glasgow itself is just a classic river town. I love that town.
Dean Klinkenberg 00:47
Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast. I’m Dean Klinkenberg, and I’ve been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people and places along America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007. Join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river, and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at MississippiValleyTraveler.com
Dean Klinkenberg 01:36
Let’s get going. Welcome to Episode 63 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. In this episode, we continue our detour along the Missouri River with part two of my conversation with Steve Schnarr from Missouri River Relief. We covered a lot of territory, just like the Missouri River does. So this conversation is split between two episodes. Part one was out a couple weeks ago. Go back and listen to that if you haven’t had a chance to do that yet. Not exactly a narrative continuity to worry about those so you can just dive right into part two as well, if you wish. We begin part two with Steve describing the process the Corps of Engineers used to channelize the Missouri River and and how that ultimately changed the river itself. What we lost in the process, and how some folks gained some new land. He talks about a Missouri River bridge that was built over land, and some about the hopes for commercial navigation on the Missouri River that just never seemed to materialize. We talked about the growing community of Missouri River paddlers and the special relationship between residents of river towns and the Missouri River. Steve offers a few tips on places to visit along the Missouri River, including a couple of areas where you can check out remnants of the old river get a taste of what the the old Missouri River was like. We finish with a description of the mission of Missouri River Relief and their big annual event, the race known as the MR340.
Dean Klinkenberg 03:10
Thanks to those of you who continue to show me support through Patreon, I deeply appreciate it, and it makes me feel good to know that you continue to support this podcast, now that we’re 63 episodes in. If you want to join the community, go to patreon.com/deanklinkenberg, where for as little as $1 a month, you can become a part of that community and get early access to all of these episodes. Patreon not your thing? Well, buy me a coffee. I drink plenty of caffeine, and I appreciate every little bit of support you can show me to help me keep that caffeine habit going. Want to know how to do that, go to MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast and you’ll find a link there to buy me a coffee. At that same address, MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast, you’ll find a list of all previous 62 episodes, as well as show notes for each of those episodes where you can go crazy and you can binge content about the Mississippi River. Well, let’s get on with the interview.
Dean Klinkenberg 04:20
Well, let’s move on to talking more about recreation. In spite of all these limitations, all these changes we’ve made to the river today, there is a lot of recreational use along the Missouri River. Can you? Can you speak a little bit to that aspect of Missouri River life?
Steve Schnarr 04:39
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There’s one aspect about the engineering of the river that we didn’t discuss. Dean, is it possible for me to go ahead and just talk about that real quick, and then we’ll just move right into to recreation. So on this lower river that i live on. Below Sioux City, Iowa, basically, we mentioned a little bit about it. The river has been channelized so it is about 1/3 of the width that it originally was, on average. And I think it’s just kind of fascinating, like how that was done. You know, there’s some really great photographs that show the process, which obviously don’t work on podcasts. So I’ll do the best I can to kind of describe the process. But essentially, the this work started in the lower river in about 1929 and more or less, kind of started in the St Louis area and moved its way up the Missouri River. So, you know, by the time it was that work was kind of getting into Iowa and Nebraska, you know, it was in the mid ’30s. But basically what they would do is they brought barges full of Cypress logs from the bootheel of Missouri and places further south. And they had these pile driver barges that would pound these giant Cypress logs down into the river as deep as they possibly could get. But, you know, still just stuck in that mud, sand matrix. And so they would basically decide where they wanted the river to be, and they would put perpendicular to the current, these rows of these pilings, just like in rows. And sometimes they have more logs where they strap them all together and make a stronger structure. And then they’d have rows of these dike structures made out of wood that would essentially push the channel of the river to one side or another. So then opposite those rows of wooden pilings, then they would have to lay down rock on the outside of the bank to hold that bank, because the dikes are going to push the water to the other side, and then they had to have rock to hold that bank, or else the river would just eat it. And all of that rock was laid by hand. So at the time that this project was done in the ’20s and ’30s, there were often 10,000 men living in floating dormitory barges on the Missouri River every year, working on this project, having to lay rock by hand on one bank of the river, and then they’re driving these pile of wing dikes on the other side. And so as the as the sediment, this is before the dams had been built, right so we have five times more sediment being carried by the Missouri River than there is right now. And as that sediment laden water would hit those piling dikes, the dikes would slow that water down, and it would just start to release that sediment, and it would build up between those dikes. So that was essentially creating new land between those dikes. And it really only took a couple of years before that really started happening. So you have this new land being formed between these rows of wooden dikes on one side of the river. And then right away, you know, cottonwood seedlings are starting to grow on that and as this cottonwood forest, this very young cottonwood forest, starts to grow on this new land, then it becomes what those wooden pilings were. So as the river then floods into that forest every year they’re catching that sediment and and cottonwoods have that amazing talent that many trees don’t, that they can be buried by sediment and still be perfectly fine. They don’t they don’t rot away. Their bark doesn’t rot away. Cottonwoods are fully designed for and adapted for that situation. So so as that so that land would just keep growing to the point now where there are these dike structures that go underground through farmland that used to be the Missouri River adjacent to the river, and they’ll be 10 to 20 feet underground, but they’ll just be farming right over the top of them. So in that process, we created, you know, out of this amazing matrix of sandbars and wetlands and willow thickets, this sort of biological engine of the river, you know, we we created a bunch of new land. We lost a lot of ecological diversity. We have a much narrower, faster river that stays in one place, you know, doesn’t move around. So the fact that it doesn’t move around, you know. That’s a big change to the, you know, the heartbeat of the Missouri River, but super convenient to us humans in so many ways. Just so hard to build towns and farm anything you know, like if that river is just constantly moving around. So like one of the you know, that’s just one of many trade offs that we’re always playing between our civilization, our ability to use our land and our ability to grow communities next to something as wild as the Missouri River, so that that whole process of channelization, it’s one of the fascinating things about it, to me, is how quickly it happens and how invisible it is now. Just hard to imagine what that river looked like when we see the river that we have now.
Dean Klinkenberg 08:53
So just out of curiosity. So, you know, the these dikes created probably 1000s of acres of land. Who owned the land?
Steve Schnarr 11:10
So I think my understanding was different in different states, right? So, like, I believe in Iowa, the state actually took over ownership of that land, and all kinds of weird land deals happened, you know, under the table or over the table, with a variety of people that lived and farmed along the river, but some of it was maintained as state wildlife areas, which is one model. In Missouri, the adjacent landowner would receive that property. So that was just a windfall for many of the farmers that lived next to the river, or other farmers might lose their property as the Army Corps of Engineers was deciding where that river is going to go. And kind of another interesting story is about that channelization process. Something similar happened just downstream in Kansas City, but the story I’m going to talk about is Decatur, Nebraska. So it’s north of Omaha, basically the counties on either side of the river in Iowa and Nebraska wanted to to build a bridge over the river, and so they talked to the Army Corps of Engineers, and in the Corps said, yeah, you can build a bridge over the river, but we’re going to move the river, so we need you to build the bridge like over here, and we’re going to move the river and put it under your bridge. So in as they’re channelizing the river, there they were trying to cut off some of these bends, take some miles out of the river, increase the gradient and the speed of the river. So the two counties and the two states raised money, raised funds, and they built a bridge over nothing. And then the Corps had its funding pulled from the Senate, so it took a couple more election cycles before they got the funding to move the river under this bridge. So they basically had this bridge, kind of in the middle of nowhere, until the Corps got around to saying, we’re actually going to, you know, doing the work to put the river under that bridge.
Dean Klinkenberg 13:26
Wow. Some of these stories get a little maddening, but a lot of this we could go here just kind of briefly too, but I want to get back to recreation. We’ve done a lot on the below the last dam to facilitate barge traffic. So how’s that worked out?
Steve Schnarr 13:48
Well, I am not an expert on this subject, and so I’m speaking a bit more on from, you know, the standpoint of just somebody that uses the river a lot and and sees, sees what goes on out there. And I do know a lot of the companies that work on the river, the tow, the tow companies, yeah, there’s, there’s not, there’s certainly nothing close to the freight that was promised that’s moving on the Missouri River. It, it continues to be a challenge. It’s very difficult between flooding events and drought events, in silting in of passages during low water times, to the challenges even of just the river in the winter, you know, filling up with ice or freezing over occasionally. There’s a lot of challenges to maintaining shipping on the Missouri River, just because of the winding nature of the river and the relatively narrow channel that’s maintained. You know, most of these tow boats can can push, like most of them, at the most will push six barges. You know, a friend of mine saw, I think, a 12 tow barge a couple weeks ago, which I have never seen before on the Missouri River. The most, I think, that I’ve seen is eight, maybe nine. But you know, you can do quite a bit more. And on the Mississippi River, up to 16 in the upper and up to 56 on the lower. You know it’s, it’s very different. So yeah, that recently it’s felt like there was a lot more barge traffic on the Missouri River. But the truth is, there’s been this three year project based off of the Inflation Reduction Act money and some 2019 flood relief money, which is poured, I don’t remember the number. I can’t remember if it was $150 or $250 million of rock into the Missouri River. So rebuilding all of those rock dike structures in revetment along the river that it was kind of quietly happening over the past three years. So there’s been a lot of tow boats and work boats and barges moving between quarries and loading sites and all these locations on the river where dikes are being rebuilt. So you know that whole channelization structure of the river has been degrading a lot since it was finished in the ’70s. And I think that the goal of this project was to, like, do a complete refresh while we had these Inflation Reduction Act funds to do infrastructure work. So, yeah, there wasn’t a lot of publicity about that project in the process, some of the habitat projects which had been done to create, to try to recreate habitat lost during the process of channelization were actually shut down by rock structures in the past three years as well. So. But I think that the core of your question is like, did it work? Do we have a lot of barge traffic on the river? We have a handful, and I would say less than a handful of companies that move freight on the Missouri River. There’s a few standard shipping things that kind of continuously happen, of oil barges, and there’s three, three companies that are that move freight fairly regularly on the Missouri River. And that’s kind of about it. There’s other specialty things that happen. There was a little boomlet a few years ago where maybe, like, three more new companies moved on to the river, and they thought they were going to give a go at it again. And I think that was, that was the year of the 2019 flood. And then the following year was a drought where the river had been rearranged by the flood, and now there were all these difficult crossings, and we had all these new pilots coming onto the river, and so people are getting stuck a lot. You know, it was quite, quite a thing, but when you look back at the history of this river, we’re always on the verge of a revival in in barge navigation on the Missouri River. It’s always about to happen, and it’s it’s a challenge.
Dean Klinkenberg 18:50
Well, it’s probably like the story of the the modern barge era, in many respects, is that there are always promises of big things to come that never seem to happen. And on some rivers, the disappointment, or the reality is, is is work. How do I want to say that? Yeah, for some rivers, the reality is well below what people expected, and probably well below what could be justified if you did an objective cost benefit analysis of and the Missouri River, I’ve looked at some of the data on the Missouri River, and there are some years where the majority of the freight being moved is gravel to maintain the shipping channel. So there’s a circular sort of reasoning.
Steve Schnarr 19:41
Well, that was certainly the case in the past few years and and then the other thing is sand dredging operations so that that there is a lot of sand harvested from the Missouri River to be used in concrete or anything you use sand for . So there are dredging operations all across the state and all the way up, you know, through Iowa and Nebraska. And then there’ll always be a tow boat with barges associated with a sand plant nearby, and they’ll just be moving empty and then loaded sand barges a few miles, you know, so.
Dean Klinkenberg 20:21
Well, let’s get on. Let’s go to the recreation bit too. I know, like, one of the things that maybe doesn’t happen as much on the Missouri River as it is on the Mississippi is the long distance paddlers. And there is a pretty active paddling community on the Missouri River before we get into the MR340 race. Like, just kind of give us an overview of this culture that’s developing along the Missouri River for paddlers.
Steve Schnarr 20:48
Well, you know, there’s always been this fun in the part of Missouri that I live in, the center of the state. There’s always been a kind of outlier, paddler, Missouri River paddler culture, you know, for decades, certainly before I came around and that it’s fun to hear the stories of a variety of different things, little races that would pop up, or expeditions bringing the public to go paddling on the river. And then also just the this general, you know, river rat kind of culture. And I think that that that has is like in all communities along the river in that’s the funny thing about rivers, is everyone just sort of thinks about their community is sort of the only community on the river. But it’s these things are happening like in lots of different places. There’s a really cool Facebook group called Missouri River Paddlers that I kind of just stumbled across, probably just searching in the early days of Facebook, or my early days of Facebook, anyways, and it’s created by a guy who lives in Livingston, Montana, interestingly enough, on the Yellowstone River. You know, not the, not the Missouri up there, but Norm in 2004 paddled and 2005 paddled upstream on the Missouri River. And I don’t remember where Norm started, but he has a Kruger Sea Wind, and he paddled following the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial kind of Expedition. So did it on his own. He was totally rogue, but like not part of any organized group, but he was, he was, yeah, paddled upstream on the Missouri River. And I don’t fully know Norm’s whole story, necessarily, but he’s done a lot of cool paddling expeditions, but he started this little Facebook group as a way for people who had done long distance trips on the river to meet each other, and also for new people that were going to be doing long distance trips to tap into a growing network of people who’d done it before, and pretty quickly in the way these Facebook things happen, you know, just anybody who enjoys paddling on the Missouri River started joining this thing. So it became quite a community. Norm is an amateur historian. He just knows so much about the history of the Missouri River, not just up in Montana, where he lives, but everywhere. He’s a Lewis and Clark obsessive, which you can imagine if you were to paddle upstream on the entire Missouri River in the Lewis and Clark bicentennial. These days, he also guides trips in the White Cliffs in the Missouri River Breaks region up there. But he you know that whole notion has built a really cool community of people that have done the Missouri River and share their knowledge with new people, and then new people come along, and Norm is just obsessively trying to find, like, who are all the people that are going to do this, these big trips on the river. And so then they start to get to know each other, and then this network of river angels is built up around the page so people that like to help people portage around dams or bring some resupply down to folks and help solve problems locally. And that’s a beautiful thing. Norm keeps a spreadsheet of contact information of river angels and and then every few years, every five years or so and Norm is kind of the catalyst of this, this group, this ever growing group, will have a rendezvous and four, five day paddling trip somewhere on the Missouri River. So like the first one was, I think it was from Huntsdale, Missouri, at the old Katfish Katie’s down to the confluence with the Mississippi. Everybody you know gathers from around the world, you know, but definitely from around the country. And it’s a lot of Canadians as well, just to hang out. And you get these, these loner adventurer types, you know, all together with a bunch of other loner adventurer types, you know. And it is just a blast. It is so fun. And they have allowed me to tag along with them. I’m not really an adventurer, but I love the river, and now I try to help out with these rendezvous when I can. But it’s, it’s really developed into a beautiful community of people, and then that sort of branches out, right? You see, have, you know, you have Big Muddy Mike. And the Big Muddy Adventures crew in St Louis, you know that. And Mike was involved in that Bicentennial Lewis and Clark thing too, you know. And he’s connected to John Ruske, you know, down on the lower Mississippi and, and that’s this, like, you know, just growing pool of knowledgeable river guides. And in a in a growing river culture, places like paddle stop in New Haven that’s now got a brewery, you know, but they do guided trips on the Missouri River. Tom Bailey, up in Kansas City’s doing trips through downtown Kansas City. And I met Tom when he was a Missouri River paddler finishing his or well, midway, he was on a trip all the way down the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico. We were doing a river cleanup in Saint Charles. And I knew about Tom because of Norm’s page, you know. And that kind of happens all the time. And so he stopped by and had dinner with us and helped do the river cleanup the next day. And then, in a few years, he’s doing a kayak business in Kansas City. So all these things kind of interconnect. And when you sort of throw the MR340 into the mix, that race from Kansas City to St Charles, which is now at its 20th year this year. You know that that the growth of these networks and these communities and the way people connect together around paddling on the Missouri River is it’s just a beautiful thing to watch, you know, and really fun to be a part of.
Dean Klinkenberg 27:42
Hey, Dean Klinkenberg here, interrupting myself, just wanted to remind you that if you’d like to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that is set in places along the Mississippi. My newest book The Wild Mississippi, goes deep into the world of Old Man River. Learn about the varied and complex ecosystem supported by the Mississippi, the plant and animal life that depends on them. And where you can go to experience it all find any of these wherever books are sold.
Dean Klinkenberg 28:23
I wanted to ask you, like, for those of us who are not adventurers, what are some of two or three of your favorite spots to go along the Missouri River that really sort of help you connect and get immersed in that world? I know because of you, I know about Ponca State Park in Nebraska. And I think that’s a really fantastic place, a segment of like, a taste of what the old Missouri River was like. You can camp right there next to the river, and there’s a lot, a lot of hiking in the state park. What are maybe a couple of other places that you’re really enthusiastic about.
Steve Schnarr 29:00
Well, there is a lot of the river that I have not paddled or been on. So you know, most of my experiences have been on the Lower Missouri River below Gavins Point Dam, the last dam there on the Missouri River, in that stretch below Gavins Point Dam to Ponca State Park that you talked about. It’s about a 60 mile stretch of the river that is unchannelized and and managed by the National Park Service, at least as of yesterday. I you know, it’s hard to know day to day right now what what’s going on, but what’s known as the Missouri National Recreation River. And it’s just so cool. I mean, it is so cool. You you paddling down the river. You know, by the time you you’re done, if you do the whole 60 mile stretch, or a piece like you’ve gotten a feel for. How this thing works, but it works so differently than our channelized river down here, it’s really hard to tell, like, where the shallow water is and where the deep water is, and then it changes. You’re in a deep little channel, and then, boom, it’s like, ends in a sandbar. Where did that water go? It’s really cool. I love that stretch of the river. A couple of my favorites down in our neck of the woods. I love Glasgow to Boonville. There’s this S curve in the river that goes through Jameson Island Unit of the Big Muddy Wildlife Refuge in the Lisbon Bottoms Unit of the Big Muddy Wildlife Refuge. This, this S curve really just got obliterated in the 93 flood. And it all was purchased to be part of the Big Muddy and there’s remnants of of shoots, some built by some, you know, recreated by floods, and some created by the Corps of Engineers as habitat that really just add this wild feel to this stretch of the river. And there’s some giant sand bars that I just love that area. And Glasgow itself is just a classic river town. I love that town. People are wonderful. There’s built up on a bluff, like all the smart river towns are. And you know, the great high shop, really nice restaurants, just a sweet town. Love that town. I love the stretch right by where I live, so from either Booneville or Rocheport, and I love putting in at Rocheport, Moniteau Creek, you know, down to Cooper’s Landing. Finish at Cooper’s Landing, which is such a unique river spot with music and beer and food trucks, that’s a stretch I love with the Rocheport Bluffs, the Manitou Bluffs and some killer sandbars in that area. And then really love the section from Herman to New Haven, that’s about a 16 mile stretch. Also some beautiful bluffs, sandbars just, just a great stretch the river in one other area that I love, that in the winter you can walk out to a lot of times, but it’s Sioux Passage Park. There is, that’s the lower end of Pelican Island. Now, Pelican Island is like five miles long in the in the upper end has this, just this amazing gravel bar. It is just, it’s like, epic. It’s just beautiful. And so again, like in the winter, you can it can actually walk out there, but that, that’s a favorite place for sure. So that’s, I didn’t mention where it was, but Sioux Passage Park is in Florissant, Missouri. So that’s kind of North St Louis County.
Dean Klinkenberg 33:06
Well, those sound terrific. There’s not enough time in the summer for me to get to all these places. I better get started here soon. Well, kind of mindful the time here. Why don’t? Why don’t we sort of wind down a little bit by talking a little bit about Missouri River Relief. So you’ve been with them for quite a few years. Tell us you know what the mission is. What does Missouri River relief do?
Steve Schnarr 33:30
Yeah, well, our our mission is really about connecting people to the river, and we have, the way we really do that is through crafting powerful experiences like that. That is really kind of the core of what we do. And in our main work is in river cleanups, which we’ve been you know, next year will be our 25th anniversary of our first river cleanup. And in those 24 years so far, volunteers have removed well over 2 million pounds of of trash from the river. And it’s they’re just magical experiences, magical experiences with with people during these education programs are really the heart and soul of what we do in the variety of audiences and the ways we approach it is really cool. I love it. Earlier this week, our education team took a group from the VA Hospital that’s doing they’re all involved in substance abuse recovery program, and we’ve been doing this for a few years, where we take them out on the river for a day, and we teach about the river. We have conversations about the river, we see different parts of the river, and. If the situation’s right, we will sometimes do a little river cleanup. We’ll do and then usually stop, stop at a good spot and do some fishing, you know, along the little steep, fluffy edge of of a sandbar, sometimes or or else, along along a couple of wing dikes or something. So that man, I mean, every single time that program is a home run. I mean these people really deeply appreciate the experience. It can be transformative. Someone this week said, “You better keep doing this program. You’re saving lives.” You know, that’s a lot, but it’s that, it’s that power of being out there on a powerful place like the river with with people where you feel safe and you’re with people that you can open up with. You know, these folks are all in this program together, and it just really is always transformative. And I think the river itself is, is the key. You know, the river does most of the work there, when then we also host canoe kayak races and work with other canoe kayak races. So the big ones for us, the big one is the MR340 that you mentioned, which is presented by Missouri American Water, one of the major drinking water providers in the state of Missouri. This is the 20th year of the race. It was started by Scott Mansker and 2006 as just a test of concept sort of thing, you know, like, could we do this? What is this even like? How does this work? The first year there was, I hear different numbers, and I’m a little confused if it was 20 or 17 paddlers started the race, and either 15 or 11 boats. I’ve heard both number combinations. I think it’s the latter. But you know, in in now, last year, we had 611 paddlers in the race. So folks are learning from each other. They’re they’re sharing knowledge training as they’re approaching this monumental accomplishment that so many people are doing at the same time, which is paddling almost across the state of Missouri in just a few days. So it’s race.
Dean Klinkenberg 37:27
It’s crazy to think that it’s 20 years doing this, that way, this, this mind boggling, kind of crazy idea to to paddle 340 miles on this river, and it’s attracting so many people, I will say, as a quick sidebar, based on my research, I really, I wrote an article for Terrain Magazine that’ll be out in July, about the very first race. The official count seems to have been 20 paddlers and 15 boats. Okay, that’s that’s a long way from 611.
Steve Schnarr 38:01
Yeah.
Dean Klinkenberg 38:05
So, so when, just, when does that kick off this year? What are the dates?
Steve Schnarr 38:10
This year. So, yeah, it’s an interesting thing about this race is it moves around. It follows the full moon, because it goes all night long. So we want to have the most light possible out there. So this year, that is July 8 through 11th. So race start is in the morning of Tuesday, July 8, and everybody has to wrap it up by nine o’clock on Friday, July 11. That that finish line is at Lewis and Clark Boathouse in St Charles, Missouri. So Missouri, American Water does a ton of work to create a kind of a beach there at the end, where everybody can land and end this amazing journey. You know, it’s, it’s a lot.
Dean Klinkenberg 38:59
You can get out of your boat and collapse and and dream about a shower and a good night’s sleep somewhere, right?
Steve Schnarr 39:04
Yes, yes, yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s an emotional scene at the finish line. Is such an accomplishment for absolutely everybody who makes it, and whether they’re, you know, beating their own personal record, or whether it’s their first time, whatever the situation is, it, is it is it’s an accomplishment to make it to the end, a lifetime accomplishment. And there are a lot of tears shed there, there at that finish line.
Dean Klinkenberg 39:39
Yeah, then you also do the Race to the Dome, right?
Steve Schnarr 39:43
Yeah, that’s right, which is ends in Jefferson City. There’s either a 16 mile or a 27 mile race ends in Jefferson City, the beautiful Noren Access with Wilson Serenity Point. And that is a both of those are fundraisers for Missouri River Relief in just just lockstep with our mission of connecting people to this river and building the community of people that love the Missouri River.
Dean Klinkenberg 40:15
And I’ll just add my testimonial to it. I’ve been lucky enough to be at a couple of cleanups for Missouri River Relief and I did the Race to the Dome one year. Fantastic group of people, great organization. I love the work that you do. It’s so important to find ways to connect people to our big rivers, and the way you describe people’s reaction, how they pulled in. I think it speaks volumes of quality to work as well. So, great job over there. You’re based in central Missouri. Well, is there anything else you want to say about Missouri River Relief or the Missouri River?
Steve Schnarr 40:58
No, that’s dangerous. I mean, I could probably go on and on, you know? I guess one thing I do want to say about Missouri River Relief is that it is, it is about people. We’re not an advocacy organization, you know, we are. We’re not in Jefferson City or Washington DC fighting for policy like that’s just not who we are. What we are is, is about bringing people in the river together. So the way that that sort of plays out is, it’s a beautiful thing. So we have a kind of a central core of what, what is called the Missouri River relief crew. And there that is sort of people in in many different cities along the Missouri River, but in particular in the Columbia area, which is where we started, people that the Missouri River Relief is just maybe one of the most important things in their life, you know? It’s, it’s something they give a lot of energy to. And in other crew members have a lot of things they give energy to, you know, but they’re also part of the River Relief crew. So these are the the behind the scenes volunteers that travel to all these different towns where we do river cleanups and education programs that make it happen. You know, they learn how to do these education programs. They learn how to drive boats. They learn whatever the role is to make these volunteer programs efficient and safe and inspiring. And there none of what we do would be possible without these people. And it’s an ever growing community of people. And beyond that, you have this community of volunteers that help put on the MR340 that helped do that, show up to river cleanups, you know, and sometimes bring their Boy Scout troop, or they bring their school group or their church, or whatever it is, their cricket team. This, this ever growing network of people that that develop this love and attachment to the river and this, this community feeling of doing, you know, accomplishing something that’s built around this river, and then our staff is just like astonishing how talented and hardworking and passionate they are. We have 10 full time staff members right now, and most of us you know are bringing multitudes of talents to this team. And so this the River Relief staff. I mean, I am just so grateful to be to work with the quality of people that I work with. Last year, we hired a new director, Jami Wade, and she’s brought just so many skills that we needed. She’s brought to the table. One more really exciting thing that’s happening is the Nature Conservancy was donated a piece of property that used to be Katfish Katie’s at Huntsdale, Missouri, and they’ve invited Missouri River leaf to be part of the development of that that property. So they’re doing some amazing agroforestry projects there, planting kind of a diversity of native trees, including some pecan and walnut plantations, as you know, an example and a test case of utilizing Missouri River floodplain to grow perennial food crops instead of, you know, exclusively corn and soybeans. And that’s the thing that’s happening. I mean, up by Brunswick, there’s commercial pecan production in the Missouri River Bottoms. It’s, it’s a thing, you know, it’s not, this isn’t, like completely innovative, but the way that they’re approaching it is innovative. And so anyway, we’re, we’re going to be, we’re working on developing plans on that property and a nearby property to hopefully move our offices and have some education spaces and then some infrastructure right on the river where we can really do ramp up our education programs and do way more more efficiently with more diverse audiences, of bringing people to the river, to the same place. This is really exciting. It’s a long term project, and it’s kind of a next phase in the world, in life of Missouri River Relief.
Dean Klinkenberg 45:52
Well, that sounds awesome. So for folks who want to keep up with what you and Missouri River Relief are doing, where are the best places to do so?
Steve Schnarr 46:02
Yeah, probably our website is riverrelief.org so you can see a lot of the programs that we have going on. One of those is a monthly speakers series in Columbia. Greenway Network in St Charles is part of this as well. And they do the monthly Big Muddy speaker series in St Charles, which is just fabulous, and someone’s picking that up in Kansas City. That website is BigMuddySpeakers.org. The MR340 website, MR340.org also has a Facebook group which is fascinating, which is Missouri American Water MR340 on Facebook. And yeah, at this point, we do utilize Facebook and Instagram, and those are all good places. You can sign up for our email newsletter and really find out what’s going on month to month.
Dean Klinkenberg 47:00
I will, I’ll post links to all those in the show notes so people can can get to it through that route as well. Steve, thank you so much for taking time today to share your knowledge and your passion for the Missouri River with us. Deeply appreciate it.
Steve Schnarr 47:17
Awesome. Dean, it is a blast to to hang out with you a little bit. And I love your podcast. I absolutely love your books. Keep it up. You are an important advocate and friend to the Mississippi River and the towns that live along it. Thank you for the work you do.
Dean Klinkenberg 47:38
Well, thank you, and maybe now the Missouri River will add to the that scope as well so.
Steve Schnarr 47:43
Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s go paddling.
Dean Klinkenberg 47:45
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free, but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon, you help keep the program going. Just go to patreon.com/deanklinkenberg. If you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that’s set in places along the river. Find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley traveler podcast is written and produced by me, Dean Klinkenberg. Original Music by Noah Fence. See you next time.
