Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller Cindy and I stood on the observation platform of Lock and Dam Number 10 last Wednesday, April 18. Locks and dams on the upper Mississippi. The Mississippi River was high. It was almost flowing over the top of the lock. A lock is like a long cement chute with a gate on either end. The locks are used to move boats past the dams. In normal weather they tower over the boats, except for towboats. But the river had swallowed up the locks. We talked about the houses we had just seen upstream in Guttenburg, Iowa. Dozens of them were flooded. The road ran between them had been replaced by the main channel of the river. It was a strange sight. I struck up a conversation with another guy on the platform. “Did you see those houses under water up there?” I asked. “Yeah, we live in one of them,” he answered. He and his family had one of the few houses that wasn’t yet flooded on the island. He had come to town in a boat, going very slowly and carefully. You would not w...

David Heiller Mom and I were looking through some old photos a couple of month ago. They were from the Schnick farm in about 1920. Most showed scenes and people. There were several pictures of women in white on a picnic on one of the bluffs. Unfortunately, I only have a photocopied  version of this photo.I would  love to have an "actual"  image, if any one from the area  has one that they would be willing to share. Then the photographer, probably Ben Schnick, did a very good thing and turned h is camera toward the Mississippi River and took the picture shown here. It is taken from the bluff just to the north of Shellhorn Road. You can see the railroad track parallel to it. What’s amazing to me is how different the river looks. For one thing the main channel, known as Raft Channel, hugs the Minnesota shore then jogs to the east around a big spit of land in front of where Valeree Green now lives. That whole stretch of river with all its timber and ...