It seems to be in our nature to draw lines that separate us from this or that. Rivers offer a convenient way for us to draw some of those lines, those boundaries, especially big rivers. In this episode, I tell a few stories about how we’ve used the Mississippi River to draw political lines,
Population (2010) 3,891 Introduction Part of Tri-Cities with Granite City and Venice, Madison was home to an amazing mix of ethnic neighborhoods for a city of its size. Add in the machine politics that ruled the city for decades, and Madison looks a lot like Chicago in miniature, at
Introduction “First in booze, first in shoes, and last in the American League.” Those last place Browns are long gone, as are the shoe factories, but we still have the booze and a National League baseball team that is a perennial contender. St. Louis, my hometown, is great place to live and full
Even at 120 years old, the Government Bridge is an impressive feat of engineering.
Rice is another community along the Great River Road (US 10) that is not directly on the Mississippi River. There was a small community in the open prairie here in the 1850s called Langola
Population (2010) 281 History The village that would become Gladstone began around 1856 when a place named Sage Town was platted. It was named after farmer Gideon Sage, a native of New York who moved here in 1848 with his fourteen children; people named Sage must have accounted for
