Fort Defiance: Confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers

My Mississippi Manifest Destiny has taken me home. Almost. I'm in Illinois, but closer to Tupelo, Mississippi than Chicago. After leaving Johnny Cash's boyhood home in Arkansas, I drove north through Missouri's "Bootheel," crossing the Mississippi into Illinois to the site of the former Fort Defiance.

See that marker up there? It's the precise spot where two of America's greatest rivers--the Mississippi and Ohio--meet.

When the Civil War began, both sides realized the importance of the Mississippi River. As I wrote in the Vicksburg part of this series, when the North captured that strategic town on July 4, 1863, and the smaller Port Hudson a few days later, the Confederacy was split in two.

As for the Federals, they knew if the South occupied the confluence of the two great waterways, the flow of Northern commerce--as well as troops and supplies--would be stopped right there.

Which is why Fort Defiance was built on the peninsula. It's the post where newly promoted Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant of Galena took up his first command in the fall of 1861.

Any evidence the fort itself has long been swept away or submerged by the dozens of floods that have overwhelmed the site since Grant moved south. Fort Defiance once was a state park, but the state abandoned it, and the nearby town of Cairo owns it.

But when I was there in late May it was closed. And it looks like it's permanently closed, although I was among a dozen people who parked in front of the barricaded entrance, stooped below the gate, and walked a mile or so on an asphalt driveway, which was covered with dried mud, to where the rivers meet.

On the left is the Ohio River, on the right is the Mississippi. You may notice the blue-ish Ohio water, the Mississippi water is muddier. Maybe it was the wind that day, but the Mississippi looked more menacing than its counterpart to the east.

Both bridges belong to the concurrent US Routes 60 and 62. Here's some trivia for you: Only two states in the union border each other that are not connected by a road--those states are Missouri and Kentucky. This highway comes very close to connecting them, but motorists have to cut through the southern tip of Illinois to get there.

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