ALTENBURG – Nearly everyone around here knows what this is.
Most have seen it, some in person and some have even walked out to it when the river was low and the really intrepid among us have climbed it.
This island in the Mississippi River near Wittenberg in Missouri and Grand Tower in Illinois is “Tower Rock.”
But do you know how old it is?
And did you know it’s destruction was prevented by a President of the United States?
Read on then.
Don Pritchard and his wife, Linda, walk back from Tower Rock when the river was so low you could walk to it from the Missouri side.
Experts say it is a 400 million year-old hunk of limestone jutting out of the Mississippi River off the shore of Perry County, Missouri, which has an interesting link to our 18th President.
Known now as “Tower Rock,” it was familiar to native peoples and European adventurers for centuries, including Marquette and Joliet, Lewis and Clark, and, well, Union General Ulysses S. Grant.
When Grant was President, the Corps of Engineers proposed to blast it out of the river to aid river navigation, but the Commander in Chief intervened on March 4, 1871 to spare it.
Learn more about Tower Rock and Ulysses Grant’s Missouri by attending a free speaker event at Altenburg in Perry County, almost in the shadow of Tower Rock.
Date: Sunday, September 11th, 2022
Time: 4 p.m.
Location: Lutheran Heritage Center in Altenburg, MO
Register: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejccyvsv40643286&oseq=&c=&ch=
First Photo credit: Lutheran Heritage Center & Museum, and second photo Courtesy Don Pritchard