Who Named the Meramec River?
Arnold’s first highway for trading and industrial shipping is the Meramec River. It has been crucial for life support since prehistoric times, and one of Missouri’s greatest recreational resources for more than 150 years.
Origin of the name Meramec is full of contradictions. Some say it means “ugly fish” or “catfish.” Some pioneers called it “The River of Death.” Its name is attributed to various Native American Indian tribes and, also, to early Jesuit missionaries and even British cartographers.
According to author H. R. Schoolcraft in his book “A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri,” the “Miaramigoua River” – known today as the Meramec — was discovered by a French Jesuit priest, Father Jacques Gravier, on his voyage down the Mississippi in 1699.
Missouria Indian in traditional Canoe
Father Gravier put into French spelling the sound that Native American Indians called the river. One of those was “Miaramigoua,” which Father Gravier’s journal showed he translated as “the river of ugly fish.”
Michael Mccafferty, author and Algonquian linguist, says the river’s name appears in a dictionary produced by 18th century Jesuit missionary Antoine-Robert Le Boullenger, and that, in the Miami-Illinois Native American language, the name is “Myaarameekwa.” In Algonquian dialect, “Myaara” means ‘ugly’ and “meekwa” means ‘fish’.
Over the centuries, English speakers mutilated river names that French explorers transcribed. Translated into English, some names supposedly meant “Water of the Bitter Spring,” perhaps due to high sulfur content, or “Waters of Death” due to drownings. Early maps labeled the river “Maramig” and “Mirameg.” Its pronunciation became Marameg, and then finally Meramec, sometimes spelled as Maramec.
Fun Times
I wonder how many scholarly experts have climbed aboard an inflated inner tube or a canoe with a rope attached to a cooler full of supplies to spend a day – or weekend – floating merrily, merrily, merrily downstream with friends or family members?
View toward Arnold from confluence of Meramec and Mississippi rivers. Copyright Jo Schaper. Used with permission.
Dozens of different campgrounds, canoe liveries and rural resorts dot Meramec shorelines, especially along the Upper Meramec away from big communities. They attract thousands of fun seekers every year (although pandemic numbers may vary).
The term “downstream” for the Meramec means both north and south because with its twists and turns the river flows both ways and, direction wise, west-east, too. See map https://mdc.mo.gov/sites/default/files/2021-12/200_2021_MeramecRiver.pdf .
Dan Drees of the Sierra Club-Missouri Chapter, wrote, “The headwaters of the Meramec River begin in the Ozarks near Salem, traveling 228 miles to join the Mississippi River south of St. Louis. The Meramec’s spring-fed waters have provided a summer haven for river recreation…the Meramec is also a haven for the greatest variety of aquatic life in the Midwest, giving observant explorers constant opportunities to discover the wealth of aquatic life it shelters.”
The Meramec drains 3,980 square miles in its journey to the Mississippi River near Arnold’s Flamm City Park. Native Americans living by the Meramec at various times represented some 20 different tribes including Delaware, Shawnee, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, Otoe-Missouria, and the fierce Osage. Some of those native peoples were subsets of Algonquin families that originated in Canada. Many died out after Europeans populated the colonies, or the U.S. government moved them to other states starting in the 1830s.
Ancient evidence of Native American tribes living near the Meramec ranges from flint digging tools and arrowheads, to shards of fabric, pottery, and teeth, to ancient graves uncovered by archeologists.
Moody Waters
Pacific resident Jo Schaper is an author, historian, poet, and secretary of the Meramec River Recreation Association. Its members include government officials, environmentalists, trail groups, and citizens promoting Meramec River activities with careful environmental stewardship. (https://www.facebook.com/MeramecRRA/).
Washing cars in Meramec River, circa 1920.
“The Meramec can be very destructive,” Schaper asserts. “It can be very beautiful. It has many moods.”
“The basin is blessed with springs, caves, and mineral resources, amongst them lead, zinc, iron, ‘glass sand,’ sandstone, limestone, and dolomite… The river flows between spectacular bluffs in many areas,” she says.
About 1820, a prospector named Thomas James discovered iron ore in Phelps County and built the Maramec Iron Works. “Such industries established upstream helped open up the river valley to settlement,” Schaper says. “The Meramec became a shipping route for pig iron, timber, and other goods on flatboats and shallow draft steamboats. Small towns arose settled by Germans, Scottish, Irish, English farmers, and businessmen, as well as settlers from Appalachia, Tennessee, and Kentucky.”
“The lower Meramec developed an extensive truck garden and farmer’s market trade with St. Louis merchants…River bottom farmers planted wheat, corn, and soybeans. The ‘glass sand’ industry grew, as did sand and gravel extraction for projects…shipped to rail points by barge, then by rail to places beyond.”
History aside, among fun-minded people today the Meramec River may be best known for camping, canoeing, cave exploring, fishing, hiking, kayaking, orienting, float trips, and environmental protectionism.
Towns with Meramec River access, and varying facilities, include Bourbon, Cuba, Eureka, Leasburg, Kirkwood, Pacific, St. James, Steelville, Sullivan, Valley Park and Arnold. In rainy seasons, each may have to deal with high water or dangerous floods.
Trout fishing in Missouri image copyright Missouri Outdoors Meramec Springs Trout Park.
Maramec Spring Park (alternative spelling) about 85 miles from Arnold in St. James, is one of many magnets for rainbow trout fishing, camping and recreation. It pumps 100 million gallons of fresh water a day, bubbling up from 350 feet below ground. The park is open all year. Missouri trout season is March 1-October 31. Camping season is February 28-October 30. Catch and Release fishing is November-February. Visit http://www.maramecspringpark.com/
Bennett Spring State Park is another popular destination for camping, rainbow trout fishing, and hiking because of its powerful natural spring, convenient river access and central location near Lebanon. See https://mostateparks.com/park/bennett-spring-state-park.
Father and Son at Meramec Spring Park. Copyright Meramec Spring Park.
The Meramec is well known for rainbow trout, yet the river also has healthy populations of large- and smallmouth bass, perch, and catfish. On Facebook you’ll find the Lower Meramec Bass Club and Upper Meramec Bass Club. Based in Arnold, the Lower Meramec Bass Club hosts a tournament every Tuesday night, water depth permitting.
Trey Harpel has fished the lower Meramec for 15 years by launching his boat from Arnold’s Flamm City Park. He is a consultant for the Omega Custom Tackle company of Festus. ( https://omegacustomtackle.com/ ). “These days I go for bass at least once or twice a week, depending on how high the water is,” he says. “I have the best luck fishing where small creeks enter the river. The Meramec also has white bass, a hybrid fish that can be big.” Harpel’s own fishing reel service and repair business serves professional fishermen and sportsmen.
Clean Up
Good times on the Meramec River come at a price: Garbage, water pollution, junk, and damaged habitats. The not-for-profit Nature Conservancy and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources are extremely concerned about the Meramec River’s health and welfare now and in the future.
Their studies show that the Meramec has been historically threatened by wastewater discharges, livestock mismanagement, mining slag runoff, stream bank erosion, urban and suburban development, sediment buildup, garbage, and pollution resulting in poor water quality and spoiled wildlife habitats. (https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/the-meramec-river)
The Nature Conservancy-Missouri Chapter worked with 29 different ecological groups to produce a Meramec River Conservation Action Plan as a blueprint for concerned organizations to use as a guide to help resolve the situation. https://www.nature.org/content/dam/tnc/nature/en/documents/meramec-river-conservation-action-plan.pdf. Projects such as the Growing a Healthy Meramec Project are having positive conservation impacts.
Brian Waldrop, Missouri Stream Team.
If you talk with Brian Waldrop, you may think he eats, sleeps and dreams about saving the Meramec River from pollution while preserving its natural beauty. You wouldn’t be far wrong because, Waldrop says, “It’s a way of life.”
Waldrop is an Arnold native who oversees eleven counties and the city of St. Louis as the St. Louis and Southeast Regional Stream Team Assistant for the Missouri Department of Conservation. “If we see a Clean Stream problem, we go there to work with local ‘clean streamers’ to manage river clean-ups, conduct water quality monitoring, and manage other initiatives,” he says
To see Waldrop and other ‘Clean Steamers’ salvaging a 500-pound metal buoy at Cora Island near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers on January 16, 2022, click here https://www.facebook.com/arnoldstreamteam211. This video is an example of what Arnold Stream Team 211 volunteers set out to accomplish almost every month.
One of thousands on junked tires pulled from Meramec River. Copyright Arnold Stream Team 211.
“The Stream Team is a group of volunteers dedicated to cleaning up the Meramec River and its tributaries, and anywhere else we’re needed!” says Waldrop. He was hired by Missouri’s Department of Conservation in 1993 to help organize Arnold Stream Team 211 after floods in the 1990s left tons of garbage, junk, trashed mobile homes, broken road signs, thousands of old tires and other rubbish in the Meramec River Basin.
Saturday, March 5, 2022, is the Stream Team’s Annual Wintertime Cleanup, a day of hard work, volunteer achievement and fellowship. To help, sign in that day at 8:00 am at Arnold City Park for a cleaning assignment, t-shirt, gloves, and garbage bags. Breakfast and lunch will be provided. When Waltrop says “We’re having a cleanup” he means that volunteers, in one day, may salvage 500 old tires, 150 rusty barrels, a few sunken old boats, and tons of junk.
“At river cleanups, you’ll see Arnold Stream Team 211 with our boats, kayaks, canoes, wrenches, saws and pulleys to capture as much rubbish as we can,” he says. “Almost any weekend, you’ll find volunteers on the Meramec, chipping away at the watershed’s massive amount of trash.”
Jo Schaper observes, “The Meramec is considered a recreational river all the way to its confluence with the Mississippi, and though it is unlikely the lower Meramec will ever return to its pristine beauty, we can still strive to preserve, restore, and cherish what we have.”
Article by Jeff Dunlap for the City of Arnold