The Environmental Studies Program has been taking the senior seminar students down the Mississippi River each year to learn in the field about how we are connected to the great river and to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana into which the river drains. Learn with us as we make our journey south through updates and individual student research projects.
Come along with us on our Spring Break Trip, along the great Mississippi River and South to New Orleans.
Saturday 8 March – Historic America
We drove all of Friday night in order to get to our first destination: the area surrounding St. Louis, Missouri. This area is extremely rich in American history and ecological features. Just west of the Midwestern city is the small town of Collinsville, Illinois, which is home to the remains of the largest pre-Columbian civilization north of Mexico. This civilization was an immense group of mound-building peoples of the Mississippian culture. We call the location Cahokia after the people who lived there when European settlers first came to the area, however they were not the people who built the great earthen mounds, and not a lot is known of the original occupiers. What is known is that these people were able to sustain a large population by growing agricultural surplus in the floodplain of the Mississippi River.
Day 7