Midwest

Missouri National Recreational River

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“O, Shenandoah, I love your daughter,
Away you rolling river.
I’ll take her ‘cross yon rolling water.
Ah-ha, I’m bound away, ‘cross the wide Missouri.”

American folk song

Above looks upstream from the hill above Mulberry Bend in the 59 mile eastern park district, where Lewis & Clark scouted some 219 years ago, along with other places introduced by the Yankton Sioux, one of many tribes that helped the expedition. The Yankton Sioux relinquished most of their land 165 years ago before either South Dakota (right) or Nebraska (left) were states, but they are still considered defenders of Pipestone in Minnesota. Their reservation runs along the north bank of most of the 39 mile western park district, above the confluence of the Niobrara, and they are park partners. Both districts of the park preserve the natural river flow, without commercial traffic, and most power boaters stick to Lewis & Clark Lake in the middle.

Further up the ‘big muddy’ Missouri River, at the confluence of the Knife River in North Dakota, teen mom Sacagawea joined their expedition with her French fur trapper husband and their infant. Like Pocahontas, her story is part of America, and similar stories are part of our heritage. As a child, I loved the song “Shenandoah” but was confused whether it was about the Shenandoah River in Virginia or the Missouri River. Turns out, Skenandoa was an Iroquois Chief, whose daughter was stolen by a French fur trapper and taken away across the wide Missouri River. Romantic stories about natives are part of our cultural heritage, albeit often one-sided. Especially given current tragedies of missing and murdered indigenous women, more effort—and funding—is needed to protect these women and tell more stories from a Native American perspective.

Niobrara National Scenic River

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Smith Falls above is the largest waterfall in Nebraska, and it makes a good picnic stop when floating down river. I got a ride with Little Outlaw from Brewer Bridge up to Fort Niobrara and kayaked back. Most people start at Berry Bridge and just float down on giant tubes ‘lazy river’ style, but they miss the pretty part at the beginning. I suppose the nature reserve doesn’t allow alcohol, so that may explain it. Either way, it’s very pleasant, with thick grassy banks, high bluffs, a couple of Great Blue Heron, several smaller waterfalls and no boat engines.

The interesting little town of Valentine is a decent base, with the small visitor center and places to stay. It’s in a well known Dark Sky county, which makes sense since the area is remote & peaceful. There’s a large nature reserve to the south, where I spotted a bald eagle but no bison. With all the space, they should have even more wildlife areas. Somewhere downriver were likely hideouts of bank robbers Frank & Jesse James. There are a number of reservations in the area, especially in South Dakota. There are not many places to charge, so I had to plan and drive a little slower than usual. Be sure to try a Runza—meat pie/ sandwich—if you see the local chain restaurant in one of the larger towns. I recommend mushroom Swiss.

Ozark National Scenic Riverways

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Nature requires pristine conditions to sustain diverse species, and here they exist undiminished. Cave Spring above is fed from Devils Well, a huge underground lake in a Karst cavern 100’ below the surface. The water is so clean and cold that bright green watercress grows in thick clumps underwater. I saw baby swallows above the cave mouth, baby ducks following their mother down the rapids, a river otter, great blue heron and bald eagles. The air was thick with mayflies over the water and butterflies on the wildflowers. Lovely.

Carr’s, aka Current River, offered to provide their equipment for the same price as a shuttle, so I paddled from Akers Ferry to my campground at Pulltite. There’s tubing downstream, but when the water is high enough, upstream is more scenic. There’s an excellent cave tour at Round Spring where I saw cave salamanders, but tickets are limited. The other river in the park is the Jack’s Fork, and there’s a scenic mill at Alley Spring where I saw baby skunks. The largest spring is unimaginatively called Big Spring, and it’s strikingly beautiful with hundreds of millions of gallons of aquamarine water pouring out of the rock daily. Blue Spring is one of the deepest in the world, but I didn’t have time to explore everywhere. This Missouri park is my favorite for kayaking, so I’m planning on returning to paddle another stretch soon.

James A Garfield National Historic Site

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For some reason, the volunteers giving the tour did not appreciate my ‘Dad joke’ references to the cat from the comics (no relation). James Garfield was a veteran of Shiloh and Chickamauga and an effective General. He was also a large man, a skilled orator and quite intelligent, devising mathematical proofs, etc. At the 1880 Republican Convention, Garfield went to support John Sherman, of the Sherman Antitrust Act, but Sherman couldn’t win the nomination. After over 30 failed ballots, someone proposed Garfield, and he became the nominee. Garfield built a path from the railroad line at the back of his Ohio property to his front porch and invited all comers to hear him speak. This new ‘front porch’ campaign was a hit, and he won.

After only a few months in office, Garfield was fatally shot in the back by a failed applicant for a Civil Service job. It took months for him to die, and a rich friend raised a considerable amount of money to take care of his widow. So, the most significant policy which arose from his brief administration was to reform the Civil Service process, so that the President wouldn’t have to meet anyone who wanted a job and hand them out (often corruptly). They also granted pensions to the widows Garfield and Lincoln.

Garfield’s widow, now rich, added 20 rooms or so to her house and built a private Presidential Library upstairs, a first. The house is mostly filled with authentic items and is remarkably well restored. The room above is the best lit and shows the finery. The library no longer contains Garfield’s papers, but it contains many books, prints and busts of authors, and Garfield’s congressional desk. Based on his Congressional career, one could argue that Garfield would have been a good President, supporting African American suffrage, voting for Johnson’s impeachment, etc., but it’s neither clear nor a flawless record. We’ll never really know.

“I’m feeling down.
Down, down, down.
Down, dooby down-down.”

Garfield

First Ladies National Historic Site

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Ida Saxton McKinley’s house above is managed by the site, and was preserved by a private foundation before the park service got involved. The tour is interesting, with some original artifacts, and the ranger did a good job of comparing this famous widowed first lady with Jackie Kennedy. While times change, the political importance of presenting a positive public image remains. 

The museum and visitor center a block away has rotating exhibits of the various First Ladies, and Nancy Reagan was on display. Jackie Kennedy’s display begins on May 2nd. Not sure why Michelle Obama’s poster has to be in the most difficult to find corner of the basement, but whatever. One of the park films was on fashion and power, and it did an excellent job of explaining the political power of First Ladies like Dolly Madison and Jackie Kennedy, who used White House events, interior design, fashion and adroit diplomacy to support their husbands’ administrations, often more effectively. 

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

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Cleveland’s mayor, the first African American elected mayor of a major city, Carl Stokes, faced an environmental crisis. The Cuyahoga River, above, caught fire in 1969. And it wasn’t the first time. Mayor Stokes led journalists on a pollution tour and tied the issue to poor and underserved communities, many of color, which often suffered most. He led the fight for change.

In many ways, this park is a great example of what can be done, when we make the effort to restore nature. While interstate highways still cross over the park, they do so from extremely high bridges, separate from the deep valley below. Many tributary watersheds are protected by municipal and state parks and other reserves. Instead of removing the old railroad line along the river, there’s a classic old train line with restored historic whistle stops for hikers, bikers, and even kayakers to return after traveling through the park one way. An old inn on the canal has been repurposed as a museum. An old mill village is now a visitor center with a store selling drinks, sandwiches and ice cream (black raspberry chocolate chip is the best). The tow path, which both separated the canal from the river and provided a walkway for teams of oxen to pull barges, makes a perfect, nearly level, dry, packed gravel path for bikers, hikers and equestrians to travel for miles through the woods, admiring both wildlife and the beautiful scenery.

This is my favorite park for bicycling. I biked from Frazee House to Peninsula, above, about 20 miles round trip, in order to see some of the northern and middle sections where the path runs close to the river and far from the road. I saw both a Bald and a Golden Eagle, the first with the help of a park volunteer who let me look through his telescope. Brandywine Falls also surprised me by being larger than expected in Ohio, and the Ledges is another popular hike. I also hiked through Beaver Marsh at the southern end to look for more birds and watched a Great Blue Heron fishing for about an hour, among the geese, various ducks, redwing blackbirds, giant snapping turtles and other wildlife. Wonderful!

Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument

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Charles Young’s father was born into slavery, escaped and joined an African American heavy artillery regiment in the Civil War. His mother and grandmother were also born into slavery but were educated and taught Charles as a boy.

Charles Young was the third African American West Point graduate to become an officer, and in 1901 he became the first African American Captain in the Army. Young was also the first African American superintendent of a National Park, Sequoia, and he eventually became the first African American Colonel in our Army.

The park here reflects the community in Wilberforce, which is the site of the first University owned and operated by African Americans. Young taught military tactics and how to be a soldier. The University also employed luminaries including WEB DuBois, voting rights activist Hallie Q. Brown, and the poet Paul L. Dunbar, all of whom enjoyed the hospitality and vibrant discussions held regularly at the Young family home, once a stop on the Underground Railroad. The Young house is still in the midst of extensive renovations, and there’s a small exhibit inside a nearby seminary library.

Young was an excellent officer, who overcame great prejudices during his interesting career, but the site is also dedicated to the many African Americans who served with him and after him. In the west, these soldiers were known as Buffalo Soldiers, due to their curly black hair, and their service is recognized at 20 different national parks, including Forts Bowie, Davis, Larned, Point, Union and Vancouver. Tragically, much of their service was against Native Americans.

River Raisin National Battlefield Park

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The battlefields outside were long forgotten, covered by a paper mill and other modern uses, but this is a story that Americans must never forget. So the community came together to make sure we “Remember the Raisin”, correctly, completely and for our kids. The park opened in 2011, repurposing an underused ice rink, and built this longhouse and other exhibits and made the park film with the support and participation of local Native American tribes. My guide passionately explained how learning the history of his own backyard literally changed his life.

The War of 1812 was a mistake, which led to the burning of the White House and the Capitol. The US could have remained neutral as the French & British continued fighting, but instead we declared war on England without adequate preparations. The cause in the history I read was about trade relations and kidnapped sailors, but the real cause was Native American relations. The war was opposed by the ocean trading states in the northeast. Americans wanted to move west, despite the land being occupied by Natives, with treaty protections in many cases. Declaring war was popular among the western border states.

Indiana Governor Harrison destroyed a sacred Native American settlement called Prophetstown at Tippecanoe in 1811. The Americans committed atrocities there, including digging up corpses and scattering the remains. That caused the almost 20 tribes to ally with the British. When the war broke out just as the British were ready to be more conciliatory, the Americans took a French settlement on the River Raisin south of Detroit. Native Americans, with some support from British-Canadian troops, retook the village and killed a number of wounded Americans, in retaliation for Prophetstown.

Americans turned their large military losses into a recruiting tool with a big campaign to ‘Remember the Raisin’—which was followed by similar campaigns for the Alamo, the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor and 9/11. When the new recruits arrived, the troops advanced and killed the Native leader Tecumseh. The British fled back to Canada. But for Native Americans, this was the beginning of a national military campaign to force them to Oklahoma and other reservations. Harrison was elected President after Jackson on an equally racist platform.

So it’s appropriate to start with the longhouse, the dugout canoes, maple syrup, corn meal and other Native exhibits, because this site is ground zero for US choosing policies of reneging on treaties, ignoring rights, forcing removal and waging asymmetrical war against the original inhabitants of our country.

Indiana Dunes National Park

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100 years ago, Alice Gray chose to live in the dunes above for ten years, camping out, swimming nude, and eschewing the working life in Chicago, visible across the lake. She became known as ‘Diana of the Dunes’, and more than anyone else is responsible for the park. She protested the removal of the huge sand dunes for glass, industry and fill. She urged that the dunes be preserved in media interviews and at a speech to the Prairie Club.

“Besides its nearness to Chicago and its beauty, its spiritual power,
there is between the Dune Country and the city a more than sentimental bond—a family tie.
To see the Dunes destroyed would be for Chicago the sacrilegious sin which is not forgiven.”

Alice Mabel Gray, aka Diana of the Dunes, in 1917

The park comprises several sections, including a Heron Rookery, an Ice Age Bog, seven named beaches and a lake, besides the dunes themselves. There’s an eponymous state park within the bounds of the site. The ranger suggested that the 1 mile Dune Succession Trail which includes Diana’s Dunes above is the best in the park, but the attached 1 mile West Beach Loop Trail to Long Lake is worth taking too to see more birds. I saw well over a dozen species of birds, including the American Bittern, and there were turtles and evidence of beavers as well.

Unfortunately, sections of shoreline within the park are also taken by steel mills, power plants, train stations, and development. The hum of cars is constant and passing trains drown out the birdsong. A local dog-walker explained how many nests have been destroyed and how developers always seem to evade environmental restrictions. Once gone, these homes for wildlife will never return, given the fragile ecosystems and manmade pollution. Saving species means reserving more wetlands and restricting development, but everywhere I go, most folks seem more concerned with their lawns than the Climate Crisis.

Pullman National Historical Park

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Railroads being perhaps the largest and most important industry in the land over 100 years ago, it was cheaper to buy the US Attorney General and easier to influence President Cleveland to send in troops than to reinstate wages for the 250,000 striking Pullman railroad workers. The leader of the strike, Eugene Debs, was thrown in jail and emerged as a Socialist. On the plus side, we got Labor Day.

The feudal administration building above was center to a huge company town, with dozens of blocks of row houses, hotels, cafes, wheelhouse, stable, church, hospital and fire station. The neighborhood has suffered more than its share of fires, including the right wing of the building above, but this new park is rebuilding and revitalizing this fascinating area. The Florence Hotel is still closed for restoration, and some of the partner museums are only on weekends in spring. There were some tours going on, but I found no information about them in the visitor center above. Walking the row houses is worth the effort, as many are still lived in and well-loved today.