American River Trails

American River Trails Traveling along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to Little Rock Arkansas Memphis Tennessee Kansas City Missouri Alton Illinois Dubuque Iowa and Alexandria Minnesota

Little Rock and the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum Little Rock is a cultural, economic, government, and transportation center within Arkansas and the South located on the south bank of the Arkansas River in Central Arkansas. Fourche Creek and Rock Creek run through the city, and flow into the river.

Little Rock is an Intermodal River Port with a large Industrial Business Complex

Memphis Tennessee and the Mississippi River Museum Memphis is a city with a rich and eclectic history: Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock ’n’ Roll, BBQ Pork Capital of the World; it began with the Native Americans who settled on the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff, then onto Hernando De Soto, the Civil War, yellow fever, the blues and rock ‘n’ roll music.

A Display of Fine Art history-making Music and a Celebration of American Heritage and Culture

Mud Island River Park by day, take the monorail, which boasts some of the city’s best views, over to the Mississippi River Museum, where you can check out genuine Civil War garb and gunboat reproductions. By night, catch a live performance at the Amphitheater with the Memphis skyline as your backdrop and the rolling river at your back. The Mississippi River Museum traces the evolution of transportation on the river from the earliest canoes through the golden age of steamboats and modern diesel towboats efficient transportation and the economic impact of river transportation played a vital role in the development of trade routes and the growth of river cities.

Kansas City was founded in the 1830s as a Missouri River port at its confluence with the Kansas River. The City Market, bordering the Missouri River, contains one of the country's largest and longest lasting public farmers' markets in the nation with several unique shops and restaurants.

An Inland Port on the Missouri River KC is the 2^nd Largest Rail and 3^rd Trucking Hub in America

The Arabia Steamboat Museum is a time capsule of life on the American frontier in the mid-nineteenth century and an opportunity to experience the everyday objects that made life possible for pioneers in the 1800s.  It contains the largest single collection of pre-Civil War artifacts in the world.

The Arabia Steamboat Museum has been a popular Kansas City attraction for over 20 years

Alton Illinois and the National Great Rivers Museum Alton is located 25 Miles north of St. Louis amid the confluence of three navigable rivers, the Mississippi, the Illinois and the Missouri, as a river trading and industrial town. The Great Rivers Region is accessible from six interstates, an international airport and an Amtrak station.

River Trails where Great Rivers Converge with Great Moments in History at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center

Grafton’s riverfront was packed with manufacturing companies, mills, quarries, loading docks, and riverboat traffic in the 1800s. Today, it is a tourist destination with its specialty shops and wineries.

Architecture Trails many blocks of housing in Alton were built in the Victorian Queen Anne style during the prosperous period in the river city's history at the top of the hill in the commercial area, several stone churches and city hall.

The National Great Rivers Museum and Melvin Price Locks & Dam feature the importance of the river system to America’s economy from her grand history and cultural significance, to her ecological importance and role as a transportation corridor.

The Mississippi River, over 2,200 miles long, is the second longest river in the United States and the third largest river basin in the world, exceeded in size only by the Amazon and Congo basins. The central portion of the river is known as the Middle Mississippi, a 300-mile reach from Saverton, MO, to Cairo, IL. Further defining the Middle Mississippi are the confluences of three major tributaries, the Illinois, the Missouri and the Ohio Rivers.
The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 marked the opening of the West, and river settlements began to grow. In 1817, the first steamboat arrived in St. Louis and the population soared. Steamboat arrivals had increased more than a thousand-fold by 1858, turning the river into a superhighway.
The Corps of Engineers continually examines the biological impact of the navigational structures on the river’s ecosystem, balancing navigational needs with those of the environment.

The National Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque is located along the Mississippi River at the junction of Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. It serves as the main commercial, industrial, educational, and cultural center for the Tri-State Area. One of the few cities in Iowa with hills, it is also a tourist destination featuring unique architecture and river views.

A Center for Culture with Five Institutions of Higher Learning

Downtown Dubuque is the center of the city's transportation and commercial sectors, and functions as the hub to the various outlying districts and neighborhoods. An area of special note is the Port of Dubuque which has seen a massive amount of new investment and new construction.

Alexandria Minnesota and the Legacy of the Lakes Museum

The Village of Alexandria was settled in 1858. The form of the name alludes to Alexandria, Egypt, a center of learning and civilization. W.E. Hicks was pivotal to the early development of the town. He purchased the townsite in 1868 and established a mill, hotel, newspaper, and store. He donated property for a courthouse, jail, and two churches: Methodist and Congregational.

The Legacy of the Lakes Museum, originally known as the Minnesota Lakes Maritime Museum, promotes lake traditions and legacies as well as preserve Minnesota history.

Minnesota is home to skilled watercraft builders since Native Americans first fashioned birch bark canoes hundreds of years ago. The museum boasts the most complete collection of Minnesota-made boats from Larson to our own Alexandria Boat Works.

Missouri River Trails

Navigation Tributaries Watershed and People

The Missouri is the longest river in North America, rising in the Rocky Mountains and flowing east and south for 2,341 miles - 3,767 km - before connecting with the Mississippi north of St. Louis.

History for over 12 thousand years, people have depended on the Missouri River as a source of food and transportation as ten Native American groups have led a nomadic lifestyles along with the buffalo herds. In the late 17^th century, Spanish and French explorers reached the river which become part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase of the early 1800s. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark followed the Missouri on their 1803-06 journey to the Pacific Ocean.

Navigation boat travel on the Missouri started with wood-framed canoes and Native American bull boats. The first steamboat was the Independence, in 1819. By the 1830s, large mail and freight-carrying vessels were running regularly between Kansas City and St. Louis. Water transport increased through the 1850s with craft ferrying pioneers, emigrants and miners. Steamboat navigation peaked in 1858 with over 130 boats operating full-time on the Missouri.

Tributaries nearly 100 significant tributaries and hundreds of smaller ones feed the Missouri River. Most rivers and streams in the Missouri River basin flow from west to east, following the incline of the Great Plains; however, some eastern tributaries, such as the James River, flow from north to south. The largest by runoff are the Yellowstone in Montana and Wyoming, and the Platte in Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska.

Upper and Lower the Upper River is north of Gavin Point Dam, the last of 15 hydroelectric dams upstream of Sioux City. The lower Missouri runs 840 miles meeting the Mississippi just above St. Louis.

The Watershed encompasses most of the central Great Plains, stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River Valley in the east and from the southern extreme of western Canada to the border of the Arkansas River. This watershed is home to 12 million people in Nebraska, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming. The watershed's largest city is Denver; many northwestern cities, like Billings Montana, are among the fastest growing in the Missouri basin.

The Missouri Watershed includes 25 percent of Agricultural Land in the United States

The People archaeological evidence suggests that the first arrivals in the watershed of the Missouri River were between 10 and 12 thousand years ago, making the Missouri River one of the main migration paths that settled in the Ohio and the lower Mississippi River Valley.

Pioneers the river defined the American frontier in the 19^th century as the major trails that opened the American West started on the Missouri River.

The First Westward leg of the Pony Express was a Ferry across the Missouri River

 Most emigrants arrived at the eastern terminus of the First Transcontinental Railroad via a ferry ride across the Missouri between Council Bluffs and Omaha. In 1869, the Hannibal was the first bridge to cross the Missouri River near Kansas City, the largest city upstream from St. Louis.

Manifest Destiny over one half million people set out from the river town of Independence, Missouri to their various destinations in the American West from the 1830s to the 1860s. Covered wagons, known as prairie schooners, provided the primary means of transport until the beginning of regular boat service in side wheelers and sternwheelers in the 1850s. Over 80 percent of upstream passengers and freight hauled from the Midwest to Montana was transported by boat, a journey that took 150 days. Conflicts between natives and settlers over the opening of the Bozeman Trail in the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana resulted in Native American victory. However, the Great Sioux War of 1876-77, sparked when American miners discovered gold in the Black Hills, ended in relocation to reservations.

Missouri River Itineraries