"If they wasn't no bad women, maybe we wouldn't appreciate the good ones.
Anyway, she yam what she yam!"
- Popeye, on The Sea Hag
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Thebes Courthouse
The Thebes Courthouse sits high above the Mississippi River in Thebes, Illinois. It served as the Alexander County courthouse from 1848 to 1860.
The Graveyard
We encountered another flooded riverside park on the north end of Thebes, Illinois.
A sign at the park explained that the stretch of river passing by here was once known as "The Graveyard" due to the large number of steamboats that sank in this congested stretch of river with frequently changing depth. In was reported in 1867 that there were 133 sunken boats sitting on the bottom of the Mississippi between Cairo and Saint Louis.
On the day we visited it wasn't boats that ran aground. It was the river itself that had run aground -- consuming this park and other parts of the small river town of Thebes.
Cairo
Prior to passing through Cairo, Illinois, I had heard that it was one of the most depressing cities in the United States.
We passed through Cairo on our way up the Great River. We found a city much like many others on our journey. We found a city decades into an economic decline fueled by changes in manufacturing and transportation -- changes that started well over a century ago.
