Bob CollinsSomething I didn’t know when the day started: “St. Anthony Falls is the only waterfall on the Mississippi River, and the now flooded gorge below is the river’s only gorge.”
The website, Nokohaha, provides that nugget in a post today, passed along by Facebook pal Jeanne Souldern.
At one time Saint Anthony Falls was not the biggest or the only falls on the river. 11,700 years ago, the “River Warren Falls” believed by geologists to be the biggest waterfall ever seen in America, took up most of what became downtown St. Paul. Back then the falls may have been 200 feet high and over a half-mile wide and kept going by a enormous flow of meltwater from Lake Agassiz that came barreling down the Minnesota River valley.
For some reason, this is one of those days when a reminder that things that predate us and our institutions will likely continue after we’re an archeological dig, is oddly comforting.
