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Columbia Bottom will give outdoorsmen taste of the past
By TIM RENKEN, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
01/04/2003
Like any good professional team, the men in the Lewis & Clark expedition went to training camp before their big game. Pretty soon St. Louis outdoors people will be able to go to that camp and get a taste of what it was like in that winter of 1803-04.
Training camp for the Corps of Discovery probably was the swampy wilderness across the Mississippi River from their camp in what is now Hartford, Ill.
Today that wilderness is known as the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, a broad tongue of land at the confluence south of the Missouri and west of the Mississippi. The tract's 4,300 acres, purchased from the city of St. Louis by the Missouri Department of Conservation in 1997, have been closed to the public for construction since last summer. With the first phase of a $10 million development nearing completion, it may reopen sometime in the spring.
What is there and why did Lewis & Clark choose it as their training camp? Two big reasons: One, every time they crossed the broad, wild Mississippi, they got experience navigating on a large river. No. 2, the Columbia Bottom in 1803 was undoubtedly a nearly impenetrable jungle of standing and downed trees, vines, thickets, mud, swamp and myriad wildlife - quite typical of what the Corps would have to live in for the first and last 1,000 miles or so of their two-year voyage.
The Columbia Bottom today only remotely resembles that now, but years hence, some of it might. Restoration of some bottomland forest, increasingly rare along the great rivers, is part of the long-range plan. Also in the plan are miles of bike and hiking trails, waterfowl marshes, overlooks, bird walks and places to go hunting and fishing. The bottom is within 25 miles of everybody in the St. Louis area.
Work so far includes about half of a 5-mile asphalt road and a parallel crushed limestone hiking-biking trail from the entrance at the area's' western boundary to a spot overlooking the confluence of the two rivers. Nearing completion are a boardwalk and a stone viewing platform overlooking the confluence.
Also in the first phase of development is a boat launch ramp and a fishing pier on the Missouri River. That access area is across the river from the new and undeveloped Confluence State Park in extreme eastern St. Charles County.
Eventually, canoe and kayak paddlers will be able to launch on the Missouri, go down the Missouri to its mouth and then go downstream the Mississippi to another access. There they can take out at another ramp after about 6 miles or a nice half-day trip. And a road will take them back to their vehicles.
Just like it was in 1804, the area includes much swampland and shallow lakes. Eventually some of these will be surrounded by low levees. Pumps will be used to flood these pools to provide habitat for the many water birds that live or migrate along the rivers. Some of this 800 acres of wetlands will be open for hunting, some will be maintained as refuges. All will be ideal for birding and other nature watching.
Eventually, biking-hiking trails within the area will link with other trails such as the Riverfront Trail from the Chain of Rocks to downtown St. Louis. Also on the drawing board for the Phase III development is a visitor center and "exploration stations" for self-guided tours of all of the area's habitat types.
Beyond its value for recreation and wildlife, the Columbia Bottom CA will serve as an immense storage reservoir for future floods on both rivers. Already, one agricultural levee on the Mississippi has been moved so that the river has more room to expand when it needs to.
No doubt, the next Great Flood will inundate the Columbia Bottom just as the 1993 flood did and countless floods before that. The bottom, just like all river bottoms, is actually part of the river. The facilities, though, were designed for flooding and they'll go back to their normal function just as soon as the mud hardens.
Reporter Tim Renken
E-mail: trenken@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-849-4239
By TIM RENKEN, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
01/04/2003
Like any good professional team, the men in the Lewis & Clark expedition went to training camp before their big game. Pretty soon St. Louis outdoors people will be able to go to that camp and get a taste of what it was like in that winter of 1803-04.
Training camp for the Corps of Discovery probably was the swampy wilderness across the Mississippi River from their camp in what is now Hartford, Ill.
Today that wilderness is known as the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, a broad tongue of land at the confluence south of the Missouri and west of the Mississippi. The tract's 4,300 acres, purchased from the city of St. Louis by the Missouri Department of Conservation in 1997, have been closed to the public for construction since last summer. With the first phase of a $10 million development nearing completion, it may reopen sometime in the spring.
What is there and why did Lewis & Clark choose it as their training camp? Two big reasons: One, every time they crossed the broad, wild Mississippi, they got experience navigating on a large river. No. 2, the Columbia Bottom in 1803 was undoubtedly a nearly impenetrable jungle of standing and downed trees, vines, thickets, mud, swamp and myriad wildlife - quite typical of what the Corps would have to live in for the first and last 1,000 miles or so of their two-year voyage.
The Columbia Bottom today only remotely resembles that now, but years hence, some of it might. Restoration of some bottomland forest, increasingly rare along the great rivers, is part of the long-range plan. Also in the plan are miles of bike and hiking trails, waterfowl marshes, overlooks, bird walks and places to go hunting and fishing. The bottom is within 25 miles of everybody in the St. Louis area.
Work so far includes about half of a 5-mile asphalt road and a parallel crushed limestone hiking-biking trail from the entrance at the area's' western boundary to a spot overlooking the confluence of the two rivers. Nearing completion are a boardwalk and a stone viewing platform overlooking the confluence.
Also in the first phase of development is a boat launch ramp and a fishing pier on the Missouri River. That access area is across the river from the new and undeveloped Confluence State Park in extreme eastern St. Charles County.
Eventually, canoe and kayak paddlers will be able to launch on the Missouri, go down the Missouri to its mouth and then go downstream the Mississippi to another access. There they can take out at another ramp after about 6 miles or a nice half-day trip. And a road will take them back to their vehicles.
Just like it was in 1804, the area includes much swampland and shallow lakes. Eventually some of these will be surrounded by low levees. Pumps will be used to flood these pools to provide habitat for the many water birds that live or migrate along the rivers. Some of this 800 acres of wetlands will be open for hunting, some will be maintained as refuges. All will be ideal for birding and other nature watching.
Eventually, biking-hiking trails within the area will link with other trails such as the Riverfront Trail from the Chain of Rocks to downtown St. Louis. Also on the drawing board for the Phase III development is a visitor center and "exploration stations" for self-guided tours of all of the area's habitat types.
Beyond its value for recreation and wildlife, the Columbia Bottom CA will serve as an immense storage reservoir for future floods on both rivers. Already, one agricultural levee on the Mississippi has been moved so that the river has more room to expand when it needs to.
No doubt, the next Great Flood will inundate the Columbia Bottom just as the 1993 flood did and countless floods before that. The bottom, just like all river bottoms, is actually part of the river. The facilities, though, were designed for flooding and they'll go back to their normal function just as soon as the mud hardens.
Reporter Tim Renken
E-mail: trenken@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-849-4239
