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This is the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. It is the Southernmost tip of Illinois, as drawn by William Clark when the Lewis & Clark expedition stopped here for four days in 1803 - decades before Cairo could call itself a thriving town. from Yale Collection of Western American, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library |
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 Several people find this page when searching for a map of the Ohio River. Here's one, above. |
Their notes for the first Cairo stop (U of MO map) seem to put them at the south end of the present business district. Silt deposits and a changing riverbed brought new land between the business area and the current conflence, more than a mile away.. The University of Missouri map (link) shows how. The dotted lines on the Lewis & Clark map may have been triangulation to measure the size and distance of land, islands, etc.
- recent aerial photo of the confluence
- color satellite
- old postcard drawing
- confluence at ground level.
- confluence at high water - aerial
- state-erected highway marker at the entrance of the confluence park.
It is here they making daily journal notes. Cairo folks insist that Lewis and Clark's expedition really began at Cairo.While here, they practiced using their navigation instruments. Some of them also went to what is now Wickliffe, KY, to see the remains of Fort Jefferson, which William Clark's brother, George Rogers Clark, had established 23 years earlier just after the Revolutionary War..
Their handwritten notes include a drawing of a sandbar in the Mississippi November 20, 1803, at the west edge of what is now Cairo. The notes say it extends below the confluence of the rivers. And another, from Nov. 21. These are samples of their note-keeping.
See their daily journal from Massac through Union Counties.
Here are their notes about the Shawnee Indians, and meeting Louis Lorimier at Cape Girardeau.
The Explore St. Louis website notes:
They reached Cape Girardeau, Missouri, a Spanish outpost, on Nov. 23. The commandant was Louis Lorimier, a French-Canadian trader who had sided with the British in the Revolutionary War. From Lewis' accounts, the two had an enjoyable dinner together after which one of Lorimier's sons accompanied Lewis to Old Cape Girardeau where Clark brought the boats ashore for the night.
The Corps' stop at Cape Girardeau was not the first visit to Missouri for Clark. He and a crew of 17 had traveled down the Ohio to its mouth in 1795 crossing the Mississippi at New Madrid in what is now Missouri. There he met with Spanish officials and protested construction of a Spanish fortification east of the Mississippi.
Maps and notes from Lewis & Clark at Tower Rock (Grand Tower in Union County, southwest of Murphysboro) are on the Tower Rock site.Floating down the Ohio? The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says
Lewis was not floating down the Ohio River for most of the trip in 1803 -- the water was very low in spots. Lewis was literally loading and unloading his boats and hiring teams of oxen at some points to drag him down the river because of the low water. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers begin improving the Ohio River in 1824 by dredging sandbars and removing snags. The first lock and dam was completed in 1885 about five miles below Pittsburgh.
Credit to grad student Drew Accord in the SIU-C geography department, and Missouri DNR historian Jim Denny for help with the map.
More of Lewis and Clark's original notes and maps of the area are available from Yale University, http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/. Once on the home page, click on "Beinecke Research Workstation." Click on the Photonegatives link under "Beinecke Digital Images."
http://highway49.library.yale.edu/photonegatives/ search for WA MSS S-897 or Ohio
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