Around Burlington: The rise and fall of ice breakers along the Mississippi River

Winter once again is running rampant over the Upper Mississippi River and the recent cold snap has seen a layer of relatively thin ice coat arrive at Burlington’s river front.

The skim of ice on the main channel is today a concern for sportsmen and lingering water fowl because the closing of the river has a relatively muted impact on commerce and daily life. However, this was not always the case.

Prior to the end of the Civil War and the coming of the railroad, the river ice meant Burlington largely was cut off from communications to eastern cities so when the ice finally retreated in the spring, a general sense of relief swept the community.

Steamboat traffic could resume, visitors could arrive and the stores once again could stock their shelves. Newspapers and barbershop conversations again would center on what boats called at the Burlington levee and how far north river traffic now could proceed.

This latter point was of some concern because the Upper Mississippi River had a number of ice check points that acted as barrier to boat traffic and one of the most notorious of these barriers was Lake Pepin below Minneapolis.

The lake is an “elliptical amphitheater” above the mouth of Wisconsin’s Chippewa River. It is encircled by hills and can be three miles in width and 22 miles in length.

Lake Pepin presented a challenge to boat captains throughout the regular navigation season with a history of losses to storms that swept river lake. But in the “ice out” season, Lake Pepin was especially dangerous.

1857 was to be a typical ice out opening and it found a fleet of 22 steamboats marshaled at the foot of Lake Pepin waiting for a channel to open. Some of the boats came as far away as Pittsburg and Cincinnati and all were anxious to be among the first vessels to reach St. Paul.

On April 30 of that year, a wind storm raced over the lake. When it had passed, a narrow channel had opened along the western shore that tempted the boat captains to try for passage.

The War Eagle and the Galena were the first off the mark and began to battle the giant chunks of shifting, crumbling ice. The Rescue, the Henry Clay, the Golden State followed close behind in the race and each boat sounded it whistles in a vain plea to pass surging the War Eagle.

The race to the Minneapolis and St. Paul docks seemed to be locked up by the aggressive War Eagle, but then disaster struck. A deck hand had ventured to the paddle wheel with a pry pole to remove a slab of ice when he slipped and fell into the river.

The War Eagle had to stop and recover its badly battered crewman while the Galena forged ahead. Galena was to hold onto that lead and was the first boat at the St. Paul levee, arriving at 2 a.m. May 1.

During the pioneer days, the arrival of the first boat of the season was hailed with delight by river towns in Iowa. These communities were isolated throughout the winter months, and the river above Keokuk was ice-locked on an average of from 75 to 105 days per year.

River ice continued to be a barrier to commerce even after the arrival of the railroad and there were numerous efforts to remedy this problem. During the 1930s, there was a serious effort by the Corps of Engineers to use ice breakers to extend river traffic.

In 1938, a Burlington native then heading up the Corp’s St. Paul district, Colonel Philip Fleming, was considering using an ice breaker to open the Lake Pepin barrier and extended the river traffic season by one month.

Three years later, the plan went into action, and following the U.S. entry into World War II, the river and its ice breakers were doing extra duty. Oil cargoes were among the principle cargoes brought north from Gulf Coast refiners .

But the river was not easily defeated and the Lake Pepin barrier continued to frustrate river traffic. The ice breakers were not financially viable and were largely abandoned, and the Mississippi maintains its solitude during winter’s shutdown.

This article originally appeared on The Hawk Eye: Around Burlington: Winter brought challenges to river traffic