A History of the Jetties at the Mouth of the Mississippi River by E. L Corthell - 1880

E-72: John Wiley & Sons. Very Good. 1880. Hardcover. Leather. 8vo. John Wiley & Sons. 1880. 383 pgs. Maps. Illustrated with Black and White Plates. First Edition/First Printing. Bound in full leather with gilt titles present to the spine with name in gilt present to the front board. Boards have wear present to the extremities of the boards. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. "There is scarcely a civilized nation in the world whose interests are not more or less deeply affected by the Mississippi Jetties. They have created, and will forever maintain, a deep and safe outlet for the most important river system on the face of the globe." Captain James Buchanan Eads (May 23, 1820 – March 8, 1887) was a world-renowned American civil engineer and inventor, holding more than 50 patents. The Mississippi in the 100-mile-plus stretch between the port of New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico frequently suffered from silting up of its outlets, stranding ships or making parts of the river unnavigable for a period of time. Eads solved the problem with a wooden jetty system that narrowed the main outlet of the river, causing the river to speed up and cut its channel deeper, allowing year-round navigation. Eads offered to build the jetties first, and charge the government later. If he was successful, and the jetties caused the river to cut a channel 30 feet deep for 20 years, the government agreed to pay him $8 million. Eads was successful. The jetty system was installed in 1876 and the channel was cleared in February 1877. Journalist Joseph Pulitzer, who had known Eads for five years, invested $20,000 in this project. A flood in 1890 brought calls for a similar system for the entire Mississippi Valley. A jetty system would prevent the floods by deepening the main channel. However, there were concerns about the ability of water moving through a jetty system to cut out the rock and clay on the river bottom. Top officials of the Army Corps of Engineers lobbied Congress for levees and flood walls of their own design, which exacerbated these disasters, and against Eads' jetty system, which would have reduced these disasters. E-72; 8vo 8" - 9" tall .