Mile 179.7 - RBD The Great Arch

John Ruskey

20 Apr 2026 � 2 min read

179.7 RBD The Great Arch

Paddling into the Great Arch is surely one of the great thrills of any Mississippi River adventure or expedition. This is also the best place to make a mid-day rest stop. Although you can’t camp here, it would also be a good place to meet your shuttle if you are taking out in St. Louis. If the Arch is too crowded during one of its frequent events, make your connection instead at LaClede’s Landing, above the Ead’s Bridge.

When Sean and I floated out of the Chain of Rocks Canal in 1982 and rowed into the port of St. Louis ice started building on our raft. With every splash of waves against the flat edge of the raft, and every gust of wind that carried spray over the deck, ice was congealing. It was in the teens and the wind blowing out of the west. In later winter expeditions I learned to add an automobile ice scraper to my river kit. This was my first experience afloat in the winter. We gripped our oarlocks grimly and tried to keep as low a profile as possible, and then pulled hard for the Missouri shore. Under the best of conditions it would take us an hour to cross a half-mile channel like this. So we had very little room for error in making a landing. The Arch was only five miles downstream of us. It was dangerous to stand up straight because of all of the ice underfoot. One wrong step would send us reeling to our feet, with the potential for man overboard. We probably should have tied ourselves to the raft. The long sweep oars groaned under the weight of the raft and our excitement in reaching the Queen City of the river. We hoped we didn’t break one, there were no spares. At long last we were able to reach the leeward side of the channel and gain some wind protection from the buildings downtown along the river’s edge, and the bluff it was built upon, and we floated under the bridges narrowly avoiding impact with the McKinley abutment, and then made shore at LaClede’s Landing, above the Ead’s Bridge.

The Arch grounds and their periphery contain a number of simple, elegant details, such as the globe-shaped lamps, and this quiet, understated railing, its simple chain mirroring both the arc of the Eads Bridge nearby and the mooring chains criss-crossing the levee below it. The Arch grounds are beautifully and elegantly laid out, a quintessential example of mid-20th century landscape architecture, aspiring to a single purpose: to serve as a contemporary frame for the Arch itself. Two gargantuan concrete walls mark the north and south ends of the grounds. (Built St. Louis)

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Table of Contents Appendix I - The Lower Missouri River Water Trail Appendix II - Upper Mississippi River Water Trails Appendix III - Mike Clark: Chain of Rocks Appendix IV - Mike Clark: Alton to Arch Appendix V - Over the Chain of Rocks with the Lewis & Clark Appendix

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