What is the significance of the Mississippi River?

The significance of the Mississippi River lies in its central role in American commerce, transportation, settlement, ecology, and culture, drawing about 41 percent of the contiguous United States and serving as the spine of the nation's interior. The river flows about 2,320 miles from Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans, the second longest river in the United States after the Missouri (which itself joins the Mississippi just north of St. Louis). Combined, the Mississippi-Missouri system runs about 3,710 miles, the fourth longest river system in the world.

As a commercial route, the Mississippi has been central to the American economy since European settlement. Spanish, then French traders used the river from the 1670s onward. Robert La Salle claimed the entire watershed for France in 1682, naming it Louisiana for King Louis XIV. France lost the eastern portion to Britain in 1763 and ceded the western portion (Louisiana Territory) to Spain in 1762, with both eventually transferring to the United States through the Louisiana Purchase of April 30, 1803. Steamboats on the river system, beginning with the New Orleans launched at Pittsburgh in 1811, dramatically reduced shipping costs. Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi (1883) described the steamboat era.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and later railroad competition reduced steamboat traffic, but barge tows continue to carry hundreds of millions of tons of cargo each year, especially grain, coal, petroleum, chemicals, and steel. The river is regulated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with about 29 locks and dams above St. Louis enabling navigation, and an extensive levee system controlling flooding.

As a settlement axis, the Mississippi shaped American population growth. River cities including Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Davenport-Quad Cities, St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans grew on the river's commercial traffic. The Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities followed river routes north toward Chicago and St. Louis.

As an ecological system, the Mississippi drains about 1.15 million square miles, the third largest river basin in the world. The Mississippi River Delta covers about 12,000 square miles and is one of the most productive fishing and oil-producing regions in North America. The Mississippi Flyway is a major bird migration route.

As a cultural axis, the river has inspired American music (the Delta Blues, Memphis blues, ragtime, jazz, and St. Louis blues), literature (Twain, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Toni Morrison), and film. The river's role during the Civil War included the Union capture of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, which split the Confederacy along the river and was as strategically important as Gettysburg fought the same week.