American Scientist

I have always thought of the Mississippi River as running from north to south, from its headwaters in Itasca State Park in northwest Minnesota to its sprawling marshy delta south of New Orleans. Thus I was quite disoriented when I visited the Quad Cities area to deliver some lectures and was told that the river there ran from east to west for almost 40 miles as it defined the boundary where Iowa juts into Illinois. The river also runs east-west for about 25 miles just before it is joined by the Missouri at St. Louis, and it flows predominantly eastward for about 50 miles between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. But it has only been in the Quad Cities area that I have heard anyone describe the counterintuitive direction of the river’s flow as remarkable.