Commerce Missouri
Commerce Missouri |
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Just the FactsNOTE: The data that follows derives primarily from the 2000 U.S. census. Comparative data for the U.S. at large and for the St. Louis metro area are presented to establish perspective. St. Louis was chosen because it is the largest city on the river as well as smack dab in the middle.
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Speaking of The Anderson House (pictured above), it was built in 1847 and is one of only a few structures in Commerce built at least a few score feet up the side of the ridge. Today it is one of Commerce's few surviving businesses having been converted into a bed-and-breakfast. Commerce is well off the beaten track; some road maps don't even bother to show it. The River Road and the Interstate both bypass the entire length of the Mississippi along the Missouri-Kentucky border. From Cape Girardeau the highways run almost due south and don't return to the river until they meet the New Madrid loop at the Kentucky-Tennessee state line. Even travellers on the Great River Road will miss Commerce and other such little communities not even realizing they're there.
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Commerce Missouri is quite a unique little town. Time and again I've written in these pages that you can usually figure out why a city or town grew up in a particular place by looking at the local geography. No where along the Mississippi is this more obvious than in little Commerce. Look at the map to the right. Look at all that flat flood plain in the Missouri bootheel and below. And there's Commerce tucked right in at the base of Crowley's Ridge as it hinges off the bottom of the Ozark escarpment. Geologists will tell you that very long ago the Gulf of Mexico reached all the way up what is now the Mississippi Valley into southern Missouri. Commerce is on what would have been the Gulf shore. When Europeans began to settle the Mississippi Valley they logically settled on good farm land fairly near the point where they first arrived in the valley. The first wave of settlers were the French who followed LaSalle down the Illinois River and settled the east bank of the Mississippi between the Illinois and Kaskaskia rivers at the turn of the 17th century. Nearly one hundred years later Americans and Germans entered the Mississippi Valley through the Ohio river and began to build settlements in what was then Spanish territory. The Spanish were agreeable to their efforts (not the last time they would make that mistake). Commerce dates from this second wave of settlement into the central valley.
Commerce, 40 miles above the Ohio-Mississippi confluence, is at the very north end of what those early settlers named Tywappety Flats. The Bootheel flood plain was a farmer's dream until the rivers ran high. If the Spring came quickly. If it was a wet Spring, and the ice a few hundred miles north in Iowa melted fast enough, those flats could be a death trap. Crowley's ridge, rising five hundred feet above the flats was a permanent safe haven where escape with one's life, if necessary, was at least a possibility. When it wants to the Mississippi can rise at a rate measured in feet per hour. Commerce today still sits in jeopardy it's bare face staring the Mississippi straight in the eye, but water street, right there at the edge of town, takes a quick left turn past The Anderson House and skedaddles up the side of the ridge just in case.
Down in the town proper some of the homes offer the uninitiated visitor a rather perplexing view of what at first must appear a very strange fad in landscape design. The properties appear to be fenced, but not with your typical white pickets, redwood slats or chain link. They're entirely surrounded by solid concrete walls as in the photo above. I imagine it's quite a bizarre sight to someone who doesn't make the connection -- they're flood walls. Each entry into the property can be sealed shut with a watertight gate. Inside the walls a gas generator can provide power to run a pump that will expel any water that seeps in. It means holding out that much longer and maybe with luck beating the river. Just in case, many yards have a john boat sitting ready.
The river at Commerce is raw and powerful. It's just coming to the end of it's steepest free fall over its entire 2,348 miles. Down off the Ozark escarpment it races at break-neck speeds to burst out into the lower valley. I well remember passing Commerce last summer on our trip south and appreciating with some fear the force of the river's current. I wouldn't want to be the captain of that tow you see in the photo. Keeping those barges off the banks in the turns or away from the intersate bridge peers thirty miles down river must be a nerve racking job -- like being an air-traffic-controller in slow motion. A little further up river from Commerce I remember Isaac turned our boat around so that I could take a picture. He had that 115 horse engine at nearly half throttle just to hold us steady against the current. It's not a lazy river here or a river to be trifled with.
This is pure farm country. The lower Mississippi Valley, starting at Commerce, is the best place on the entire planet to grow things. Although there's not much small-business agriculture left in this country, the Mississippi Valley is one of the places where some of the little guys are still hanging on. Speaking of growing things, Missouri's river valleys are ideal locations for growing grapes and Missouri has long had a respectable wine making industry. Most of Missouri's wineries are located along the central Missouri river between Columbia and St. Louis, but the Mississippi has a few. Boutique wineries are popular tourists attractions and many of the more touristy towns have one or two. Most are just fronts for larger producers who bottle the same stuff under half a dozen labels. Grafton Ill at the Mississippi-Illinois confluence has two, but neither one grows a single grape. Lousiana MO has a new one, but the wine comes from a large winery in Columbia. Some that do make their own wine use grape juice they buy from California. Other's produce an unremarkable product best suited to the tastes of their Sunday afternoon tourists -- light, not too dry and not too memorable.
At the top of Crowley's Ridge however is River Ridge Winery where Jerry and Joannie Smith grow their own grapes and make wine. Now, I'm no wine connoisseur, but I've a better than average understanding and appreciation of the vintner's trade and product. River Ridge Winery is a unique treasure tucked away in a secluded little corner of God's best effort to recreate paradise here on earth. I admit that I mention Jerry and Joannie's place with some trepidation as I'm jealous and in this case not very willing to share. Too much attention might spoil one of the best things I've ever found on the banks of the Mississippi. The first time Isaac and I visited River Ridge we met Joannie who treated us to some delightful conversation and fresh baked bread (and wine). Lucky, the winery dog took us for a tour of the vineyards and then accompanied us as we climbed down the bluff to the river. Since then I've returned and met Jerry, pictured above. Jerry makes wine that is head and shoulders above the boutique wineries in the tourist traps. The only vintner in the region with the guts to make a chardonnay and shiraz and the skill to pull it off. Jerry makes his share of the lighter sweeter wines to sell to the tourists, but Jerry's more than just a business man. He's in love with what he does and not satisfied with anything less than excellence. I've visited every winery along the Mississippi and tasted most of Missouri's local wines; River Ridge is the cream of the crop. By the way, if you do happen to stop by for a visit and Jerry starts telling jokes, well, he makes great wine.