American Bottom
The American Bottom is the
nature.This plain with its rich
The southern portion of the American Bottoms is primarily agricultural, planted chiefly in corn, wheat, and soybean. The American Bottom is part of the Mississippi Flyway used by migrating birds and has the greatest concentration of bird species in Illinois. The flood plain is bounded on the east by a nearly continuous, 200- to 300-foot high, 80-mile (130 km) long bluff of limestone and dolomite, above which begins the great prairie that covers most of the state. The Mississippi River bounds the Bottom on its west, and the river abuts the bluffline on the Missouri side. Portions of St. Clair, Madison, Monroe, and Randolph counties are in the American Bottom. Its maximum width is about 9 miles (14 km) in the north, and it is about 2 to 3 miles in width throughout most of its southern extent.
History
Indigenous people
Before European settlement, the area was home to indigenous peoples for many centuries. The peak civilization was created by peoples of the
The most prominent structure is
Archaeological investigation has determined that the various types of mounds were arranged in a planned construction that reflected the
French settlement
After Cahokia was abandoned, there were few indigenous inhabitants in the area in the 17th century at the time of first French exploration.
Americans
American settlers began arriving near the end of the American Revolution after the Illinois Country was ceded by Great Britain to the new United States. In the early years, American single men came to the country, and there was little government and much anarchy. As Americans arrived, many residents of French descent moved west of the Mississippi River to St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Within several years, the former French colonial towns had become mostly American in population, and English dominated as the language.
The Goshen Settlement was an early American settlement at the edge of the Bottom. The settlers continued to use the rich alluvial floodplain mostly for agriculture until the late 19th century. Brooklyn, Illinois was founded by 1839 as a freedom village by free people of color and fugitive slaves, led by "Mother" Priscilla Baltimore. It was the first town incorporated by African Americans under a state legal system.[3]
The rivers were used as transportation routes for trading and travel. The introduction of
The area of the Bottom directly across from St. Louis became highly industrialized. Industrialists located many "smokestack" industries here, such as steel mills, chemical plants, and oil refineries, because they ran on Illinois coal. In addition, the people who built the first bridge from St. Louis across the Mississippi River to Illinois imposed a tax on heavy traffic. Rather than pay it, developers simply located their industries in East St. Louis.
In the early 20th century, dramatic growth in industrial jobs in the American Bottom attracted many
Like the Mississippians, Americans made massive changes in the floodplain; their development has reduced its ability to absorb floods. The destruction of wetlands and paving over of areas along all the major rivers has increased the severity of flooding over the decades, despite attempted engineering solutions for flood control, which in turn have exacerbated flooding. During the Great Flood of 1993, major portions of the southern Bottom were flooded; 47,000 acres (190 km2) of land below Columbia, Illinois was inundated, destroying the town of Valmeyer. The waters came within five feet of overtopping the East St. Louis levee. If they had run over, they would have flooded 71,000 acres (290 km2) and destroyed this urban industrial area. More than nine feet of floodwater covered the town of Kaskaskia in 1993 after it overtopped the levee; only the spire of the Catholic church and roof of a nearby shrine rose far above the waters.
Major cities in American Bottom
See also
- Brooklyn, Illinois, first town in the US to be incorporated by African Americans
- Southern Illinois, a major geographical region of Illinois
- Karstregion draining into the Bottom.
- Fort de Chartres, early French colonial fort
References
- ^ a b F. Terry Norris, "Where Did the Villages Go? Steamboats, Deforestation, and Archaeological Loss in the Mississippi Valley", in Common Fields: An Environmental History of St. Louis, Andrew Hurley, ed., St. Louis, MO: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1997, pp. 73-89
- ^ Biloine Whiting Young and Melvin L. Fowler, Cahokia: The Great Native American Metropolis, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000, p.315
- ^ Cha-Jua, Sundiata Keita (2000). America's First Black Town: Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830-1915, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002, p.85.
External links
- Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site and Interpretive Center, Official Website
- "American Bottom", Illinois historical marker
- "American Bottom Ecosystem Partnership", Southwestern Illinois Resource Conservation & Development
- The American Bottom Project, Narrative histories, Sites, and Itineraries of The American Bottom