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Look Back: Mississippi River Ice
Date: 2/6/2011 Album ID: 1165522
Photos by Post-Dispatch photographers
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By Tim O'Neil --- In late January 1936, vicious cold tormented the Midwest. Lows here fell to -10 degrees. On the Mississippi River, large pancakes of drifting ice crunched against bridge piers and boats. The Army Corps of Engineers warned against crossing the rivers on foot. The foolhardy, though, rarely heed such things. T
The Wiggins Co. ferry William Ruprecht on the St. Louis levee, north of the Municipal (later MacArthur) Bridge on Jan. 6, 1928, hemmed in by an ice jam on the Mississippi River. Ice completely covered the river that winter, as it did at least 10 times from 1831 to 1936. (Post-Dispatch)
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Ice almost completely covers the river, looking north from the St. Louis Levee toward the Eads Bridge, on Jan. 30, 1931. The current managed to move the ice. (Post-Dispatch)
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Ice cakes flow past the intake towers for the St. Louis water works in the Chain of Rocks of the Mississippi River on Dec. 15, 1934. (Post-Dispatch)
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Three men prepare to walk across the river from the foot of Gasconade Street in south St. Louis on Feb. 7, 1936, after a massive ice jam covered the river. They managed to get across. (Post-Dispatch)
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People walking across the frozen Mississippi River from East St. Louis to St. Louis on Feb. 12, 1936. The Municipal (later MacArthur) Bridge piers are in the background. (Lou Phillips/Post-Dispatch)
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R. D. Schmickle of the U.S. Geological Survey prepares to operate a device that measures the speed of the Mississippi's current on Feb. 22, 1936. He is lowering the torpedo-shaped instrument into a hole cut into the river ice atop the middle of the channel. (Post-Dispatch)
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U.S. Geological Survey engineers measure current over the channel on Feb. 22, 1936, near the foot of Davis Street, in Carondelet. (Post-Dispatch)
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A man examines some of the chunks of ice along the St. Louis riverfront on Feb. 26, 1936, after the ice jam across the Misssissippi river began breaking up. (Post-Dispatch)
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The breakup of the ice jam on Feb. 26, 1936, mangled the Missouri Pacific Railroad approach to a ferry landing at the foot of Davis Street, in Carondelet. The ferry ran to East Carondelet, Ill. (Post-Dispatch)
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Ice jams the river and the lock at the old Alton Lock and Dam No. 26 on Feb. 11, 1940. The city of Alton is across the river in this aerial photo taken from the Missouri side. Completion of the dam in 1937 permanently slowed the flow of ice from the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers, although Missouri River ice continues to flow unabated past St. Louis. The Melvin Price Lock and Dam, dedicated downstream from the old dam in 1994, dutifully continues to hold back ice. (E. J. Burkhardt/Post-Dispatch)
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People stand on ice in the river away from the St. Louis riverbank near the Municipal (MacArthur) Bridge, circa 1940. (Harry Hoffman/Post-Dispatch)
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A towboat pushes three barges slowly through ice jamming the Mississippi River just above the Alton Lock and Dam in February 1949. A thaw had broken loose ice along the river above Alton, and the loose and jagged chunks drifted downstream to into the Alton pool. (Arthur Witman/Post-Dispatch)
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Barge tows stalled by ice on the Mississippi River, just above Alton, on Jan. 28, 1955. (Lloyd Spainhower/Post-Dispatch)
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A towboat pushes two barges downstream through ice near the Illinois riverbank just above Alton on Feb. 13, 1958. (Renyold Ferguson/Post-Dispatch)
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Illinois River ice merges with Mississippi River ice at their confluence near Elsah, Ill., nestled in a valley in the bluffs on the lower left. The campus of Principia College is visible on top of the bluff. (Renyold Ferguson/Post-Dispatch)
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A Federal Barge Lines towboat and its barges in a break in the ice in the Mississippi River about 10 miles upstream from Cairo, Ill., and the Ohio River, in March 1958. It was described as the worst ice jam on the middle Mississippi since 1950. (Arthur Witman/Post-Dispatch)
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Ice cakes float downstream, nearly filling the Mississippi River just beneath the Eads Bridge on Jan. 23, 1959. The excursion boat S.S. Admiral and the old railroad trestle along Wharf Street (now Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard) are in the background. (Jack January/Post-Dispatch)
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A harbor tug, left, and a bigger towboat grind their way through ice at the upstream entance to the lock at the Alton Lock and Dam in early March 1960. At right is a barge stuck in the ice. (Robert Graul/Post-Dispatch)
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Ice cakes drift downstream beneath the Eads Bridge on Jan 23, 1962. The view is from above the Illinois riverbank, with the MacArthur Bridge in the background. (Jack January/Post-Dispatch)
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Three barges locked in ice on the Mississippi River above the Alton Lock and Dam on Feb. 8, 1962. The view is toward the Missouri riverbank. (Renyold Ferguson/Post-Dispatch)
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