Harold Fisk's Amazing Mississippi River Map

[00:00:00]Maps can be pretty awesome, and this is the series where I talk about some of the best maps ever made. Welcome to Awesome Maps. For this episode, we're going to talk about a set of handdrawn thematic maps of the evolution and change of the Mississippi River. What people often forget about rivers is that while most of them have been around for longer than people have, they don't always stay in the same place. Water has the ability to erode things over time.

[00:00:25]And when you have banks made out of something as soft as soil, sand, or clay, any river that is large in size with a lot of rushing water is going to move around. Thanks to the advent of satellite imagery, it's a lot easier to see examples of different rivers changing so much, even across a time span as small as a few decades. You can imagine that before satellites, it would have been much more difficult to find out how the river changed. But the US Army Corps of Engineers selected a ctographer by the name of Dr. Harold Fisk to help find out the changes of the Mississippi River over time. And he made a fantastic set of maps on it. But before we get into the awesome maps, here's a word about this video sponsor.

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[00:02:33]Then, of course, sometimes the river is changed artificially through canals. And so, you could see how a potential future canal may affect the way the river will flow afterwards. So, a group like the Army Corps of Engineers mapping out the Mississippi River makes sense, especially considering how many major US settlements are along the Mississippi River that could be affected by its changes. In particular, there is a region of the Mississippi River known as the Meandering Belt that has the majority of the river systems water volume and therefore tends to change the most. The Mississippi River Commission was established in 1879 to organize various Army Corps of Engineer projects in the area. In 1938, there was a map published by them that tried to map out major changes of the Mississippi River by showing five different historical courses as far back as 1765. But the map featured in this episode was going to be at a much larger scale. A ctographer named Dr. Harold Norman Fisk was hired in 1941 to help with the Mississippi River Commission's efforts to study the Mississippi River's movements over time across the meandering belt. For Fisk's map in particular, there would be 30 mapped historical courses. While not all of them would be labeled to the precise year because there was simply no way to know with that technology at the time, there was still a general chronological order. While there would be the help of some aerial photography, most of this was mapped with the help of soil sampling. Over 16,000 soil samples were collected to help make this map. You would find the age of the soil and when it was deposited, and that would help you find how the river changed course over time. Eventually, the map series was finally completed and published in 1944 across 15 different maps. The detail is frankly stunning. And while the information it displays might be overwhelming for someone who isn't as familiar with these kind of maps, it's still very aesthetically pleasing to look at. as well. When looking at some sections, it's honestly amazing to see how much the Mississippi River has tangled itself in every direction over time. It's no wonder that you need an entire department of the Army Corps of Engineers dedicated to it in the first place. Then, of course, imagine having to do the painstaking work of drawing these 15 maps by hand. Like, honestly, it makes my wrist cramp a little bit just thinking about it. But obviously, the hard work was well worth it. What's even more impressive is that more recent maps of the Mississippi Rivers changes done through much more precise LAR mapping line up very well with Dr. Fisk's maps, which I think is a testament to how much work went into making these maps as accurate and informative as possible in the first place. Considering it was a handdrawn map from 80 years ago, you could almost cut him some slack if he was off in a section or two. But no, he did a fantastic job. To give you a sense of the scale of the mapping, the website Radical Cgraphy did a good job of overlaying all 15 maps along the Mississippi River so you can get a better perspective on the extent of this work.

[00:05:31][Music] Now, I couldn't find much on Dr. Fisk's life after he made this map other than he died in 1964 at the age of 56. But Dr. Fisk's maps have been referenced in several later maps and studies. And considering the magnitude of the work, I'm not surprised. I don't have enough room on my walls to print all of these maps out and pin them up, but I absolutely would if I could. If you like learning about this awesome map and you want to learn about others, like the Polish map of Scotland carved out of stone or the most impressive language map of North American English that I've ever seen. You can check out my previous episodes in the awesome maps playlist.

[00:06:38]And of course, you can subscribe to see when the next episode comes out. Then finally, I'm able to do these videos in the first place thanks to the help of your support through channel memberships or Patreon. So seriously, thank you. I'm Emperor Tiger Star and I'll see you guys next time.

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