FOREST AND 
STREAM 
283 
What the Keokuk Dam Has Done 
Fair Vistas Ruined by the Overflow, but the New Marshes May Make Refuges for Migratory Fowl 
By Orln Crooker. 
* 
There has been an abundance of romantic 
boating on this part of the Mississippi the past 
season. Areas which hitherto had offered invit¬ 
ing tenting spots to the camper and fisherman 
have been easily navigated in boats. The tree- 
draped flowing aisles afforded wonderful vistas 
scale. Trees and shrubs made a valiant fight 
for life—and are doing so yet. But the odds 
are too heavy against them. The region is 
doomed to become a desolate waste. Gaunt life¬ 
less spars will soon take the place of arbors of 
waving green. The higher points of land will 
Gaunt, Lifeless Spars Soon Take the Place of Green 
Wonderful Vistas of Green Arched Waterways 
become small green islands in the midst of a 
wilderness of lifeless trees—all in order that 
hungry industries may have power upon which 
to feed and that men may clip coupons from 
beautifully engraved bonds. It may be that some 
of the timber will be cut while it is yet service¬ 
able, but the desolation of half submerged 
stumpage will be no less a heartache for the 
lover of outdoors. 
It is not unlikely that this vast labyrinth of 
winding, tree-lined river channels will afford 
congenial shelter for migratory water fowl. In 
this case some compensation will ensue. But 
Nature enthusiasts along this section of the 
ANY will feel keenly the desola¬ 
tion which is beginning to be 
manifest along some two score 
miles of the Mississippi river 
above the great hydro-electric 
plant at Keokuk, Iowa. The 
gigantic dam which now ob¬ 
structs the Father of Waters 
at this point has caused a change in the river 
level for a distance of some fifty miles up 
stream. At Fort Madison, fully twenty-five 
miles away, the rise in the river has been not 
far from eight feet. Thousands upon thousands 
of acres of heavily wooded river bottoms have 
been flooded. The water has backed up on 
either side of the main channel for great dis¬ 
tances. 
The reservoir thus formed had been slowly 
filling for some time before the plant was put 
in operation. The effect, of course, was not un¬ 
like an extraordinary spring freshet. There were 
those who predicted that the trees would not 
send forth their leaves in the spring of 1914, 
but they were disappointed. Trees and shrubs 
flung out their green banners as usual, although 
the former stood waist deep in the blackish 
waters and the latter waved frantic salutes to 
passing boatmen from half submerged positions 
in the swirling tide. 
of green arched waterways. In the branches 
overhead birds sang unconcernedly and lent a 
choral accompaniment to many a chugging motor- 
boat which nosed its way into places which 
hitherto had been regions of the deepest woody 
seclusions. 
. By mid-summer of last season, however, with¬ 
ering green began to show here and there—a 
prelude of what is to come on so extensive a 
mighty river wear doleful faces these days. They 
confess that with their favorite haunts already 
a thing of the past and the entire region becom¬ 
ing so changed from what they can long re¬ 
member, they have a fellow feeling for the In¬ 
dian as he faced the encroachments of the 
white man upon his territory. It is the same 
story, written of course in different symbols, of 
the aftermath of progress. 
