I've always been a sucker for a pretty face. I received this answer from a beauty who knows what she's talking about. I did find a lot of this info on a number of sites, but I'm still looking for collateral damage or happenings. I love this response.----Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Honey, Why are you so damn hung up on the water? Heeeheehee... Okay. Let's see if I can figure it out with you. When the tectonic plate rose up (that bend being the northern most edge of it), the water flowed BACKWARDS, like a waterfall. It wasn't necessarily a waterfall, more like really bad rapids. The water spilled over the edge of the riverbank on the MISSOURI side, and onto the floodplains. Most of that area was all under water. Water also flowed backwards into creeks and streams, and smaller rivers. Farmland was inundated. Oh, and it was one of the coldest winters on record - the UPPER Mississippi, et al were frozen over, thus restricting most northbound traffic for the winter. Now, if you are asking how far back the river actually flowed backwards, well, that's a matter of speculation. The rapids and the resulting displaced water affected only about three miles of the Mississippi River itself. It wasn't FLOWING backwards, it was a swirl of water, with the top water flowing with a backward current, and the bottom of the river still flowing the same direction - south. Does this help any? You really need to get yourself that book called "The Earthquakes America Forgot" by David Steward and Ray Knox. It has lots of little info in it just like the one that's troubling you. They go into great detail about WHY bells rang in Boston, but people near Natchez and New Orleans had to hear about it from rivermen who were scared sh*tless... Yours truly, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- (I'm pretty sure that star between the h and t should be an "O")