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only limited success. There was some repair activity: wing dams were being erected to deflect the strong current, and dikes were being built. But, as Twain had prophesied in Life of the Mississippi, the riverfront communities would “get left” to ruins the next time the spring rains were heavy.42 (That is precisely what happened in 1912, 1913, 1927, and beyond.) Nevertheless, sounding like James B. Eads, Roosevelt promoted river engineering over wild, scenic nature for the sake of enhanced commerce on the Mississippi River. Commerce ruled the river. Barges were the gods. The entire Mississippi watershed, Roosevelt believed, needed to be treated as a single unit from sources to stream mouths. Full coordination between the Army Corps of Engineers, Reclamation Service, Forestry Bureau, Division of Soils, Geodetic Survey, and Mississippi River Commission had to commence at once if there was to be even a remote chance of containing the Mississippi.43

The river floods were terrible, but Roosevelt liked to brag that the Mississippi Delta had the richest soil in the world. He believed that wherever a Mississippi levee system was built properly, and fears of flooding were removed, the delta would become densely populated, and Memphis and Baton Rouge would become huge transportation hubs. But if the levees weren’t secure, if the Mississippi was allowed to rampage, then settlements like Cape Girardeau or Helena would become shells of their former selves. “At present the possibility of such flood is a terrible deterrent to settlement,” Roosevelt lamented, “for when the Father of Waters breaks his boundaries he turns the country for a breadth of eighty miles into one broad river, the plantations throughout all this vast extent being from five to twenty feet under water.”44

Meanwhile, there was plenty of horseplay and suspender snapping aboard the steamer. Every dinner of catfish, hush puppies, and wine was accompanied by bursts of laughter. Churning down the Mississippi, paddle wheel grinding on and on, naturally caused the men to think of Fink, Shreve, Grant, Pike, and all the rest associated with the river called the “Father of Waters.” It was fun to watch Pinchot plucking his thick mustache as he told comical anecdotes about his trips to the west coast conifer forests. And each town they passed was of historical interest: Hannibal, Quincy, Saint Louis, Sainte Genevieve, Osceola. All the way to Memphis, Tennessee, the USS Mississippi churned, past old Native American mounds, modern locks, and earthen levees built in ancient times.

Formally attired, wearing his top hat on the deck, sitting in a rocking chair and reading Inland Waterways Commission reports until the aperitif hour, Roosevelt prepared for his big address to the Great Lakes–to–Gulf Deep Waterway Association in Memphis. Basically, Roosevelt’s speech in Memphis on October 5 was a rehash of his conservationist address at Jamestown earlier that year. That October, in fact, marked Roosevelt’s last reclamation project, in Oakland, California. Pinchot had cleverly suggested that in May 1908 Roosevelt hold a White House Governors’ Conference to tackle all of America’s serious natural resources issues. Without hesitation Roosevelt agreed. “It ought to be among the most important gatherings in our history,” Roosevelt said, “for none have had a more vital question to consider.” Staying in Memphis for only an evening, Roosevelt left the Peabody Hotel, a mid-South institution, for a stroll to the house where Ulysses S. Grant lived before the siege of Vicksburg.

President Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot conferring about conservation while traveling down the Mississippi River in October 1907.

T.R. and Pinchot. (Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library)

Roosevelt liked the feel of Memphis and how the Chickasaw bluffs rose dramatically several hundred feet along the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. The bluffs afforded protection from floods and access to river commerce. When the Civil War began in 1861 about 1,000 steamboats had plied the river. Now,