A trip down the mighty Mississippi

To travel down the Mississippi is to gain a new appreciation of America and its history. This morning, Mo Rocca journeys to the great river's humble beginnings. The mighty Mississippi rises gently here at its headwaters in northern Minnesota before meandering past Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and empties into the Gulf of Mexico, 10 states, 2,318 miles. And it all begins here, some 200 miles northwest of Minneapolis, more kiddie pool than storied colossus. How's it feel? It feels great. I know, isn't it? Especially when it's 87 degrees, it feels wonderful. Why did I wait so long? I don't know. That's what a lot of people say. Why did I wait so long to discover the Mississippi at its beginning? Connie Cox is head naturalist at Itasca State Park at the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Now that I got you in the river, what we actually have to do is we have to go from the east side of the Mississippi and walk across to the west. And as we're going, you need to make a wish because it is told that in 90 days your wish will come true. Because in 90 days is when this water will reach the Gulf of Mexico. There's no way to understand American history from the very beginning to right up to now without understanding the river. Paul Schneider is a historian of the Mississippi. Probably like everyone who didn't grow up on the Mississippi, my early impression was probably reading Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. Mark Twain's Mississippi, alive with steamboats, scalawags and gamblers, has a hold on us still. The river for him becomes this place where all walks of American life come and intersect and cross and are changed by going in and out of it. But today's adventurers, like Eddie Harris, know the river has new stories to tell. Why can't we talk about the river as the modern invention or the modern entity that it is? Eddie has taken his canoe down the length of the Mississippi River twice. It's still seriously important economically and culturally, musically, all sorts of ways. And it's just a beautiful piece of nature. He was 29 the first time with next to no experience with boats. Along the upper river, before the river turns into anything, when it's still a real small stream, I began to feel comfortable and I loved it. There are calm days and danger days, and there are days when the river just won't let you move at all. 30 years later, Eddie took up his paddle again to make a documentary. Suddenly you round this bend and boom, Minneapolis is right in front of you. And southward it flows, past Iowa and Illinois. We caught up with Eddie 500 miles downriver near his hometown of St. Louis. Were you ever afraid of the river? Probably, because we were definitely warned about it. The warning was don't even look at it because the whirlpool will hypnotize you and suck you in and you will drown and die and you'll never be heard of again. Continue drifting down past Tennessee and Arkansas. We've been 1500 miles so far and we have about 450 miles left. And you're deep in the lower Mississippi where the river is nearly a mile wide and where we found writer Rinker Bach, another modern day river rat. This is based on an 1846 flatboat design that I saw in a painting. There's no photographs then. Not long ago, he built a 19th century style flatboat. The boat weighs eight tons. And navigated it from Pittsburgh down the Ohio River and into the Mississippi. This is a pretty placid stretch here because it's basically straightaway. But when you get into the real sharp bends, it can be a little bit more complicated. Rinker steered us towards Natchez, Mississippi, a center of trade for the pre-Civil War South's slave-based economy. That house right up there, the Breyers, is where Jefferson Davis was married. Probably the wealthiest community in America right there. That's where all the cotton was coming out when cotton was king. Today, it's mansions built by slaves are tourist attractions. So this is Longwood, one of the grandest mansions ever built in Natchez. Scott Smith, who goes by Jimmy the Cricket, showed us Longwood Mansion. Begun in 1859 and never finished. This does not disappoint. Look at that. Nothing else like it on earth. Natchez's days as a bustling port long ago receded, but the river itself remains as vital as ever. Regardless of what the rules of the road are, the reality is I need to give way to him. Ordinarily, processions of massive barges carry oil and gas, corn, rice, soybeans and wheat upriver and down. How important is the Mississippi River today to the American economy? Sixty percent of our agricultural product goes down the Mississippi, as much as 30 percent of our petroleum product, either delivered upstream or downstream down the Mississippi. So the Mississippi River is not just a pretty waterway or relic, something you learn about in fourth grade history. It is the economic lifeblood of the country. A lifeblood regularly threatened, most recently just a few weeks ago. As the raging Mississippi flooded farmlands and river towns. Now on this part of the wall, in some areas, there are 10 feet of water. From Minnesota to Louisiana, bringing barge traffic to a standstill. This year was a generational flood, likely for many people who were impacted the worst flooding that they've ever experienced. At the National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Tom Graziano and his team hope to predict future floods with greater accuracy by analyzing past disasters, like the Great Flood of 1927. Thousands are fleeing as the waters of the Bayou Tesh burst through the restraining wall. And the Great Flood of 1993. 700 of Grafton's thousand residents have been evacuated. 85% of the town is underwater. And then there was the time way back in 1881 when the river ended up changing course and the town of Kaskaskia, Illinois ended up on the Missouri side. The Army Corps of Engineers spends billions of dollars a year trying to keep the Mississippi from wreaking havoc. But, says historian Paul Schneider, there's only so much man can do to control it. When it's not at its absolute wildest, it behaves the way the Army Corps of Engineers in particular and the navigation industry need it to behave. But it has not been tamed. No taming for this mighty, mesmerizing river. Does the Mississippi River get the credit it deserves? No, no, I think most Americans have forgotten about it. And it's not just its role in commerce, it's its role in the imagination and in the American mind. I think the Mississippi represents the power and the majesty of the USA. All of the characteristics that we want to give to this country, I think we can find inside the Mississippi River.