The Decades-Long Effort to Tame the Wild Mississippi River: How Engineers Reshaped America's Greatest River

About this episode

In this episode, Dean Klinkenberg interviews Dr. David Beadenharn about the historical and engineering efforts to reshape the Mississippi River.

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I talk with Dr. David Beadenharn, a river engineer who has spent over 45 years studying the lower Mississippi River. David grew up in Vicksburg, Mississippi, stumbled into river work after leaving the Air Force, and never really managed to leave. Our conversation starts with a picture of what the Mississippi looked like a couple hundred years ago, when the river was wide, shallow, full of sandbars, islands, and massive logjams. Back then, the river was consta...

People in this episode

Host: Dean Klinkenberg

Guest: Dr. David Beadenharn

Topics covered

• river engineering
• Mississippi River history
• environmental changes
• civil engineering
• interview

Keywords

• Mississippi River
• river engineering
• Dr. David Beadenharn
• Vicksburg
• environmental history

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Vicksburg, Mississippi, Mississippi River, lower Mississippi River

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