Great River Road Trip, Day #6
Friday, May 9, 2025
Today was a great deal of car time. We stopped at a few small towns, but they were nothing worth photographing. Much of the day was spent paralleling the river, but not within view of the river.
The one place that was both a river town and quite interesting was Cape Girardeau, Missouri. They have a long history of battling floods from the Mississippi, so they have installed a very impressive flood wall. They are known for the elaborate murals they have painted along much of the length of the wall. This second has murals depicting significant events in the town history. For example they have one about when President Taft visited and others pertaining to when the town had a significant fire.
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As shown here, each panel along the impressive length the the wall depicts an image pertaining to the history of Cape Girardeau.
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These two “Mississippi River Tales” murals flank each end of the historical storyboard they have created out of the flood mitigation wall.
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The south end of the wall is dedicated to paintings of famous people from Missouri.
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This image gives some perspective as to how long this section of the wall is, and this is just the portion dedicated to famous people from Missouri. The wall is even longer on the north end with the historical murals.
A few are wild west ruffians by the names of Calamity Jane and brothers Frank and Jesse James.
Today’s baseball reference is to Stan Musial, Yogi Berra and George Brett.
Joe Garagiola and Walter Cronkite.
The river facing side welcomes boaters to Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
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The far end of the Welcome to Cape Girardeau, Missouri mural facing the river.
These are the literal flood gates which they will close as flood mitigation when the river gets too high.
Cape Girardeau City Hall as seen from the street below.
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Our final stop in Cape Girardeau was at Historic Fort D. This is a fort built by Union Soldiers in 1861 as one of a series of four similar forts named A through D. Fort D is the only one that still remains. They were built to defend against Confederate attack from the Mississippi. You can see the river on the right side of the image; it is still quite a distance from this position. However, the information at the site said they had cannons here capable of shooting a 32-pound ball at distances up to one mile. It took over 8-pounds of gunpowder per shot to get that distance. That was sufficient to hit boats trying to approach from the lower Mississippi.
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They have done a nice job restoring and preserving this historical site.
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The plaque on site said that the soldiers entertained themselves by fashioning logs into bowling pins and rolling one of the 32-pound cannon balls in a homemade bowling alley. They also cut, shaped and painted logs black and fashioned them to look like additional cannons when viewed from the river. The enemy would believe they were better fortified than they actually were and it was a deterrent from attempts to pass up river.
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