“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book — a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
– Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
From its origins in northern Minnesota to the spidery channels of its delta in the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River runs more than 2,300 miles through the North American continent. About 40% of the country lies within its watershed. I have crossed this river at least 4 times (that I can remember), and each time I’ve been struck by its grandeur.
In the 19th century, the Mississippi River was a bustling thoroughfare and the heart of the young American nation. Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first published in 1884 and set in the 1830s-40s, narrates a boyhood tale of adventure and misadventure on the great river. As depicted in this illustrated map, originally published with a calendar in 1959, the story begins near Hannibal, Missouri, and ends in Pikesville, a fictional Arkansas village. Colorful drawings of locations from the novel – towns, shacks, and steamboats – provide a visual representation of contemporary life along the river.

The adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the book by Mark Twain : [Mississippi River]. Everett Henry, 1959.
Learn more:
- An upcoming exhibit in the lobby of the Geography and Map Reading Room will focus on maps of the Mississippi River.
- This blog post looks at a map showing river meanders of the Mississippi over the years.
- Another blog post delves into a pictorial atlas of a major city on the Mississippi – St. Louis.