Dead Beyond Resurrection: Engineering an Enduring Tragedy on the River

• Author: G. Tracy Mehan III
• Pages: 242-245

242 Best of the Books: Ref‌lections on Recent Literature

Dead Beyond Resurrection:

Engineering an Enduring

Tragedy on the River

By G. Tracy Mehan III

Mississ ippi River Tragedies : A Century of Unnatur al Disaster, by

Christine A. Klein and S andra B. Zellmer. New York University Press.

258 pages.

From the March/ April 2015 issue of The E nvironmental Forum.

Like Christine Klein and Sandra Zellmer,

authors of Mississippi River Tragedies: A

Century of Unnatural Disaster, I grew up

on the Big Rivers, in St. Louis, near the con-

uence of the Mississippi and Missouri, the

latter being the largest tributary of the former.

I was steeped in the legend and lore of Father

Marquette, Lewis & Clark, Mark Twain, and

my ancestors, one of whom journeyed to St.

Louis from Quebec by canoe. His son piloted

steamboats a ll the way to Fort Benton, Mon-

tana, long before the massive da ms were con-

structed on the Missouri.

I recall, with regret, a passage in Henry

Adams’s famous autobiography, prompted by

his visit to the 1904 World’s Fair and the Mis-

sissippi, that “the city of St. Louis had turned its back on the noblest work

of nature, leaving it bankrupt between its own banks.” e waspish Adams

may have been a bit harsh on my home town, in that the fate of the river was

as much driven by federal policy as local interests. Still, today, at the foot of

the Gateway Arch and its massive fortications against ooding, is a water-

borne highway for behemoth barges, a river too sterile and too dangerous for

recreational boating much less swimming or shing.