Menu
Idea

rivers

74
Filter by:

Filter by published date

A painting of a steamship on the Mississippi River.

A Fundamental Boundary: What the Mississippi River Means to America

On the meaning and use of rivers and other waterways.
by Boyce Upholt via Literary Hub on June 11, 2024
Photograph of The Flint River flowing at Sprewell Bluff Park in Upson County.

Jimmy Carter, Protector of Rivers

Jimmy Carter is known as a eradicator of disease and champion for world peace, but he also supported environmental efforts closer to home.
by Grant Blankenship via GPB News on March 15, 2023
Profile of a young Black man with a proud expression. Photograph by Helen Cammock from her exhibition, I Will Keep My Soul.

All Water Has a Perfect Memory

A landscape has come into being through a constellation of resistances to these strategies of control.
by Jordan Amirkhani via The Paris Review on January 31, 2023
Three children playing on a frozen river.

The Ohio River

When the river freezes, lives change.
by Tiya Miles via Perspectives on History on January 27, 2022
The Moshassuck River running under a bridge with graffiti.

Difficult Topographies

There are whole hidden worlds pressing into this one.
by Sam Coren via Contingent on May 5, 2021

Reversing a River: How Chicago Flushed its Human Waste Downstream

In 1906, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Chicago to move forward with a spectacularly disgusting feat of modern engineering.
by Gregory D. Smithers via We're History on February 18, 2020

Water is for Fighting

How a profit-driven approach to water rights left the west high and dry.
by Sparky Abraham via Current Affairs on July 8, 2019

Oral Histories of The 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire

The events of June 1969 have come to define both Cleveland and the river. Some Clevelanders have a different story.
by Rebekkah Rubin via Belt Magazine on June 3, 2019

Willful Waters

Los Angeles and its river have long been enmeshed in an epic struggle for control.
by Vittoria Di Palma, Alexander Robinson via Places Journal on May 1, 2018
Salmon fisheries at Celilo Falls.

Ken Kesey Meets Lewis and Clark

Celilo Falls was the economic and spiritual center of the Indian world in the Pacific Northwest.
by George Rohrbacher via Commonplace on January 16, 2006
Frank Hallam, "En Masse Sunners Seen from Pier 45, 4/25/1982" (1982/2012) (collection of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Gift of the artist)

When NYC’s Piers Were a Sanctuary for Gay Gathering 

In the 1960s, amid the shipping industry's decline, the empty piers became a site for cruising and creativity for gay men in particular.
by Rhea Nayyar via Hyperallergic on June 22, 2025
The U.S.-Canada border, as seen in this satellite map, mostly runs along the 49th parallel — and wasn't chosen at random.

Trump Calls the U.S.-Canada Border an "Artificial Line." That's not Entirely True.

Just because it's man-made doesn't mean it's not legitimate.
by Rachel Treisman via NPR on May 9, 2025
Barges on the Mississippi River.

The Quixotic Struggle to Tame the Mighty Mississippi

An epic account of a vital economic artery and our many efforts to control it.
by Lina Tran via UnDark on June 28, 2024
People swimming and standing in water.

On the Time Benjamin Franklin, American Show-Off, Jumped Naked Into the Thames

On our millennia-long love-hate relationship with getting in the water.
by Vicki Valosik via Literary Hub on June 27, 2024
Map of Southeast DC showing the Anacostia River

The Anacostia and Residential Displacement in Postwar Southeast DC

The long-polluted Anacostia bisects the District’s Potomac waterfront, segregating the majority-Black Southeast from the rest of the capital city.
by S. D. Hodell via The Metropole on April 17, 2024
A photograph of the SS Eastland.

Checking out Historical Chicago: Cynthia Pelayo's "Forgotten Sisters"

The SS Eastland disaster and Chicago's ghosts.
by Elizabeth McNeill via Chicago Review of Books on March 20, 2024
Archival map of the U.S.-Mexico border region near Mexicali, Mexico. Displays the Colorado River Delta system

A Cartography of Loss in the Borderlands

Mexicali’s "Colorado River Family Album" documents what is no more.
by Caroline Tracey via High Country News on February 21, 2024
The Falcon Dam on the Rio Grande, which runs across the US–Mexico border, Starr County, Texas, 2017.

Stopping the Old Rio Grande

In the 1950s the construction of a dam on the Texas–Mexico border displaced communities from their land—and anticipated the wall-building underway today.
by Caroline Tracey via New York Review of Books on January 11, 2024
Loggers standing next to logs floating down a river in the Oregon forests

Water Logs

Log drivers once steered loose timber on rivers across America before railroad expansion put such shepherds out of work.
by Akanksha Singh via JSTOR Daily on October 3, 2023
A view of the Grand Canyon.

When the Government Tried to Flood the Grand Canyon

In the 1960s, the government proposed the construction of two dams in the Grand Canyon, potentially flooding much of Grand Canyon National Park.
by Livia Gershon, Byron E. Pearson via JSTOR Daily on August 12, 2023
In 1938, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter sit in the middle of a group of men rafting the Colorado River.

The Historic Grand Canyon Adventure Two Women Had For Science

Botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter braved rapids and steep cliffs to catalog numerous plant species.
by Melissa L. Sevigny, Sarah Durn via Atlas Obscura on May 29, 2023
Lithograph of the 1870 Great Mississippi Steamboat Race.

When Deadly Steamboat Races Enthralled America

Already prone to boiler explosions that regularly killed scores of passengers, steamboats were pushed to their limits in races that valued speed over safety.
by Greg Daugherty via Smithsonian on April 26, 2023
A topographical map from the 1850s showing Alexander's Island as an entity in the Potomac

A Cartographer’s Lament: The D.C. - Virginia Boundary That Wouldn't Stay Put

Was this Virginia? No one was quite sure.
by Jane Winik Sartwell via Boundary Stones on April 21, 2023
Venable Mound, Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, built ca. 700–1200 CE.

Monuments Upon the Tumultuous Earth

For thousands of years, Indigenous societies were building hundred-foot pyramids along the Mississippi River.
by Boyce Upholt via Emergence Magazine on March 23, 2023
Painting depicting the U.S. Army and American Indians signing the Treaty of Greenville, 1785.

How the (First) West Was Won: Federalist Treaties that Reshaped the Frontier

Treaties with Britain, the Confederated tribes, and Spain revealed that America was still dependent on the greater geopolitics of the Atlantic World.
by Brady J. Crytzer via Journal of the American Revolution on December 29, 2022
Cover of "Beaver Land," featuring a beaver tail

A Fascinating History of Beavers Shows How the Species Shaped the U.S.

Leila Philip's book is thrilling, both on scientific and historical levels.
by Katrina Gulliver via Washington Post on December 13, 2022
Colorado River.

On Its 100th Birthday, the Colorado River Compact Shows Its Age

The foundational document was flawed from the start.
by Jonathan P. Thompson via High Country News on November 11, 2022
Flooding in Livingston, Montana, with Yellowstone National Park mountains in the background.

What Extreme Flooding in Yellowstone Means for the National Park's Gateway Towns

These communities rely almost entirely on tourism for their existence—yet too much tourism, not to mention climate change, can destroy them.
by Megan Kate Nelson via Smithsonian on June 16, 2022
Photograph of a Fish Weir

A River Interrupted

Why dam removal is critical for restoring the Charles River.
by Julia Hopkins, Robert Kearns via Charles River Watershed Association on March 3, 2022
Watercolor view of Lower Harlem Valley, a landscape of rocky hills and brushy plants.

War Weary Nature

Environment, British occupation, and The winter of 1779-1780.
by Blake McGready via The Gotham Center on January 25, 2022
View More
30 of
74

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History