It’s clear that a changing climate means more precipitation, in the form of big rain events, across the Midwest. If we are to avoid some of the disastrous effects from this spring, we’ll have to make “room for rivers.”
For millennia, Native American people traveled and traded on the Mississippi River. When colonial powers moved into North America, they quickly saw the importance of controlling transportation and the movement of goods on the river. In 1820, The United States government established Fort Snelling at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers to protect American fur trade interests in the region and to gain a foothold in the western territory that would become Minnesota.