North America’s two largest rivers meet as the Missouri River enters the Mississippi at the Edward “Ted” and Pat Jones Confluence Point State Park near St. Louis, MO.
I am watching a six-foot log ride the Missouri River current upon entering the Mississippi at the Edward and Pat Jones Confluence State Park north of St. Louis. The log follows the Missouri’s defiant flow halfway across the conjoined river until the Mississippi catches it, spins it, and realigns its path.
The rivers’ convergence has long appeared as a battle of wills between the two giants. In 1673, the first European observer of the rivers’ confluence, Jacques Marquette, described “an accumulation of large and entire trees, branches, and floating islands…issuing from [the Missouri], with such impetuosity that we could not without great danger risk passing through it.”
Judging from the log bounding halfway across the Mississippi, the two rivers haven’t yet called a truce.
Life above the water level, though, is tranquil. Confluence Point State Park, the adjacent Riverland Migratory Bird Sanctuary along the Mississippi, and several additional parks and refuges along the Mississippi and Missouri offer 30,000 acres of wetlands, woods, and prairie a stone’s throw from St. Louis and its suburbs.
“Over 300 bird species use the Mississippi/Missouri corridor during the fall and spring migratory seasons,” says Ken Buchholz, Director of the Audubon Center at the Riverlands Sanctuary. In the fall, their flight patterns converge at the confluence much like the rivers’ waters, and in spring they diverge at the site as they come back north, selecting their respective paths as if from among highway exits.
Whether in migration or living year-round, so many species gather near the confluence that the Audubon society designated the region an international Important Bird Area (IBA) in 2004. Especially during migration season, the Riverlands-Confluence region “is a birding hot spot popular among enthusiasts,” Buchholz says.
Bald eagles are among Buchholz’s favorites. Among them are a growing population of year-round residents, as well as migratory eagles who come down from the north in colder winters. Other celebrated visitors include trumpeter swans, paddler and diving ducks, and Canada geese. Residents include various species of owls, raptors, and shoreline birds. “Limits on development along the river has helped to retain habitat,” Buchholz explains.
All on the northern edge of metropolitan St. Louis.
* * *
When I visited the Confluence Point State Park on a late summer afternoon, I encountered both tumult and solitude. For me, however, the confluence’s commotion was more related to the packed and swift U.S. 67 expressway traffic hustling to cross both rivers. The final exit before the Mississippi quickly transitioned me from metropolitan traffic to an isolated, five-mile road on the peninsula between the two rivers where the only other car in sight belonged to a man photographing backwater egrets.
Immediately off the exit, the pace slows. Riverlands Way Road slips along a causeway through the Alton Slough. The Audubon Center at Riverlands is the last significant building encountered on the peninsula, aside from a handful of scattered farms and a station for conservation vehicles. Riverlands Way road soon turns to gravel as it winds along the narrowing peninsula to the confluence.
When I pulled in at the Confluence Point State Park parking lot, mine was the only car in sight. Signboards near the parking area, however, tell of this lonely site’s celebrated natural and cultural history. The Mississippi and Missouri’s combined watershed incorporates 40% of the continental U.S. and a small reach of Canada, the fourth largest watershed in the world. From ancient times the confluence—along with the nearby Illinois River to the north and the Ohio River to the south—offered indigenous peoples a trade and transportation route to vast portions of the continent.
In 1804, William Clark and the Voyage of the Discovery crossed the Mississippi into Missouri River (Meriwether Lewis would join them upriver at St. Charles) as they embarked on their commissioned odyssey to explore the Louisiana Purchase. In a letter sent back home, Clark echoed the prevailing sentiment that the Missouri presented the stronger flow: The Missouri, he wrote, “seems to dispute the preeminence [of] the Mississippi.”
A short 1/3-mile trail leads from the parking lot to the confluence itself. The first stretch is confidently laid down in cement. From there, the trailblazers seem to have acquiesced to the fickleness of the rivers’ flow as the trail transitions to dirt. Near the convergence, the trail had disappeared entirely, its exact path having been mudded over by early summer floods.
Now, in late summer, the rivers were limping past in time of drought. “Flood pulses are changing habitat,” says Buchholz. “More frequent high water upsets a wetland complex by bringing in non-native or invasive species.” But droughts are increasing along with the floods. “We have more roller coaster years in which flooding is quickly followed by drought, with barges tied to shore waiting for the river to come back up.”
If there is a bright spot, it may be that the more frequent flood-drought cycle is getting the attention of St. Louis residents and business people as they are encounter the impacts of climate change.
Another bright spot lies in some increased collaboration between conservation groups and government agencies ordinarily more geared to commercial use of the rivers. The Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary, for example, was paradoxically enhanced when the shoreline was slated to receive dredge material from the nearby construction of relocated Lock and Dam #26. Wildlife biologists at the Army Corps of Engineers strategically placed the fill “to re-create and enhance some of the wetland expanses that one would have seen in earlier times,” says Buchholz.
* * *
When I reached the confluence point, I turned in three directions: one, upstream along the Upper Mississippi; two, upstream along the Missouri; three, to the point of merger and downstream, where the conjoined rivers take the name “Mississippi,” but the Missouri keeps up the fight.
The log, though, finally pivoted and turned downstream.
-- December 2024
The rivers’ convergence has long appeared as a battle of wills between the two giants. In 1673, the first European observer of the rivers’ confluence, Jacques Marquette, described “an accumulation of large and entire trees, branches, and floating islands…issuing from [the Missouri], with such impetuosity that we could not without great danger risk passing through it.”
Judging from the log bounding halfway across the Mississippi, the two rivers haven’t yet called a truce.
Life above the water level, though, is tranquil. Confluence Point State Park, the adjacent Riverland Migratory Bird Sanctuary along the Mississippi, and several additional parks and refuges along the Mississippi and Missouri offer 30,000 acres of wetlands, woods, and prairie a stone’s throw from St. Louis and its suburbs.
“Over 300 bird species use the Mississippi/Missouri corridor during the fall and spring migratory seasons,” says Ken Buchholz, Director of the Audubon Center at the Riverlands Sanctuary. In the fall, their flight patterns converge at the confluence much like the rivers’ waters, and in spring they diverge at the site as they come back north, selecting their respective paths as if from among highway exits.
Whether in migration or living year-round, so many species gather near the confluence that the Audubon society designated the region an international Important Bird Area (IBA) in 2004. Especially during migration season, the Riverlands-Confluence region “is a birding hot spot popular among enthusiasts,” Buchholz says.
Bald eagles are among Buchholz’s favorites. Among them are a growing population of year-round residents, as well as migratory eagles who come down from the north in colder winters. Other celebrated visitors include trumpeter swans, paddler and diving ducks, and Canada geese. Residents include various species of owls, raptors, and shoreline birds. “Limits on development along the river has helped to retain habitat,” Buchholz explains.
All on the northern edge of metropolitan St. Louis.
* * *
When I visited the Confluence Point State Park on a late summer afternoon, I encountered both tumult and solitude. For me, however, the confluence’s commotion was more related to the packed and swift U.S. 67 expressway traffic hustling to cross both rivers. The final exit before the Mississippi quickly transitioned me from metropolitan traffic to an isolated, five-mile road on the peninsula between the two rivers where the only other car in sight belonged to a man photographing backwater egrets.
Immediately off the exit, the pace slows. Riverlands Way Road slips along a causeway through the Alton Slough. The Audubon Center at Riverlands is the last significant building encountered on the peninsula, aside from a handful of scattered farms and a station for conservation vehicles. Riverlands Way road soon turns to gravel as it winds along the narrowing peninsula to the confluence.
When I pulled in at the Confluence Point State Park parking lot, mine was the only car in sight. Signboards near the parking area, however, tell of this lonely site’s celebrated natural and cultural history. The Mississippi and Missouri’s combined watershed incorporates 40% of the continental U.S. and a small reach of Canada, the fourth largest watershed in the world. From ancient times the confluence—along with the nearby Illinois River to the north and the Ohio River to the south—offered indigenous peoples a trade and transportation route to vast portions of the continent.
In 1804, William Clark and the Voyage of the Discovery crossed the Mississippi into Missouri River (Meriwether Lewis would join them upriver at St. Charles) as they embarked on their commissioned odyssey to explore the Louisiana Purchase. In a letter sent back home, Clark echoed the prevailing sentiment that the Missouri presented the stronger flow: The Missouri, he wrote, “seems to dispute the preeminence [of] the Mississippi.”
A short 1/3-mile trail leads from the parking lot to the confluence itself. The first stretch is confidently laid down in cement. From there, the trailblazers seem to have acquiesced to the fickleness of the rivers’ flow as the trail transitions to dirt. Near the convergence, the trail had disappeared entirely, its exact path having been mudded over by early summer floods.
Now, in late summer, the rivers were limping past in time of drought. “Flood pulses are changing habitat,” says Buchholz. “More frequent high water upsets a wetland complex by bringing in non-native or invasive species.” But droughts are increasing along with the floods. “We have more roller coaster years in which flooding is quickly followed by drought, with barges tied to shore waiting for the river to come back up.”
If there is a bright spot, it may be that the more frequent flood-drought cycle is getting the attention of St. Louis residents and business people as they are encounter the impacts of climate change.
Another bright spot lies in some increased collaboration between conservation groups and government agencies ordinarily more geared to commercial use of the rivers. The Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary, for example, was paradoxically enhanced when the shoreline was slated to receive dredge material from the nearby construction of relocated Lock and Dam #26. Wildlife biologists at the Army Corps of Engineers strategically placed the fill “to re-create and enhance some of the wetland expanses that one would have seen in earlier times,” says Buchholz.
* * *
When I reached the confluence point, I turned in three directions: one, upstream along the Upper Mississippi; two, upstream along the Missouri; three, to the point of merger and downstream, where the conjoined rivers take the name “Mississippi,” but the Missouri keeps up the fight.
The log, though, finally pivoted and turned downstream.
-- December 2024
A short trail runs beside the Missouri River to its meeting point with the Mississippi at Confluence State Park.
Greater White-Fronted Geese are among the migratory waterfowl splashing down at the Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary. Photo contributed by Madi Hawn.
The Audubon Center at Riverlands near the Missouri-Mississippi Rivers confluence. Photo contributed by Madi Hawn.