The two men, both professors at LSU, would meander the river’s levees, exploring the movement of the river over time. Fisk writes in his report that “many of the ideas concerning the nature of the alluvial valley were originated while Professor Russell and the writer were making reconnaissance field investigation prior to the work on this project” (3). Richard Russell, his colleague at Louisiana State University (LSU), was his constant companion. For his investigation, Fisk traveled 650 miles from Wycliffe, KY, all the way to Head of Passes at the mouth of the Mississippi, searching for signs to indicate the river’s path over thousands of years. His eyes seem to be looking closely at something tiny and massive at the same time.įisk had a deep appreciation for the art of wandering the archeological sites of the old Mississippi. In a photo circa 1960, his nose juts widely out, offering ample support to his thick-rimmed glasses. His face, round and weathered, has the look of sedimentary rocks slowly settling into place. Fisk, born in 1908 in Oregon, looks like a geologist. Though many today know the beautiful maps that came from this study, few know about the man who created them. Each map records thousands of years of the river’s evolution, as close a representation to the venerable nature of the river as any map made at that time.
#Mississippi river map series
He developed a series of maps that do not just document the current location of the river, but consider the flow of time and how the river meanders across the earth. In his 1944 report, “Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River,” Fisk investigated for the first time “the nature” of the Mississippi and its constant evolution. Harold Fisk, a cartographer for the Army Corp of Engineers recognized that the Mississippi River was a living, mutable element. Each view of the river, like a photograph, captures only one instant of an endlessly moving waterway. But there is always something irrepressibly powerful in the river, a conduit of space and time continuously churning through the North American continent. The water may be brown, or blue, or somewhere in between depending on the slant and quality of light. The path to the top of the levee begins below the water level, rising quickly until the view opens, revealing the Mississippi River in one brief instant.
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