2022 Mighty Mississippi Forever First Class Postage Stamps

Description:

The Mississippi River is at the core of the nation¡¯s heritage, and is variously referred to as America¡¯s backbone, its heart and its soul. From Lake Itasca¡¯s trickling overspill in Minnesota, the Mississippi flows and grows for 2,300 miles.

It streams through varied topography in Wisconsin¡¯s Driftless Area, past Iowa¡¯s millennium-old effigy mounds, and by the remains of Cahokia, the nation¡¯s largest pre-Columbian city, in Illinois. The Gateway Arch in Missouri rises near where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked to venture westward in 1803.

The Ohio River, flowing in along Kentucky¡¯s northern border, doubles the Mississippi¡¯s volume. The Lower Mississippi is a riparian superhighway. Massive engineering works ¡ª channels, locks, dams and levees ¡ª help accommodate barge tows more than 1,000 feet long, common along the Arkansas-Tennessee boundary and beyond.

Abundant bayous in Mississippi and Louisiana split the river into a bird-foot-shaped delta. The New Orleans area hosts the river¡¯s largest port.

At the point where the Mississippi reaches the Gulf of Mexico, the trickle that started in Lake Itasca has intermingled with waters from 31 states.