Mile 39.7 - RBD Commerce, Mo

John Ruskey

20 Apr 2026 � 1 min read

39.7 RBD Commerce, Mo

Commerce is located at the base of Thebe’s Gap, which is where the Mississippi River burst through the Pawnee Hills into the Missouri Bootheel after the melting of the last ice age, some 10 to 15 thousand years ago. This charming floodplain town is your welcoming committee to the flatlands below. No services, but access vie small concrete ramp at the top end of town (below the Commerce Gage). Say goodbye to the Missouri bluffs. No more hills, no more limestone or dolomite cliffs. Say hullo to the alluvial floodplain which stretches out to the Gulf of Mexico below here.

As you continue into the Missouri Bootheel below Commerce the towns recede further and further back, and the river takes on a decidedly more wild aspect, very similar the the feeling you get in the big meandering channels of the Lower Mississippi, which you are quickly approaching downstream. From 2009 Mr. & Mrs. ‘Sippi Expedition: “We floated on buffeted southeasterly by an all-afternoon progression of gentle straight line winds with bellowing & billowing storm clouds undulating & evolving & mysteriously emerging from a massive slow-moving system straddling the hills of southern Illinois & the Missouri Ozarks, gentle rain showers sweeping through & slow winds until about 6:30pm when the trees north bank began thrashing & bending side to side and low scuddy clouds were skirting fastly overhead as if something big was coming in, we hugged the north bank for protection and curled into the first possible camp, which turned out to be a beauty, the river blessed us again! A beautiful protected camp at the head of Brown’s Bar, a calm inlet to beach the raft with a steep bank and deep waters, completely isolated from the main channel, no tugboat waves beating our baby tonight! Dinky & Popeye made a delicious pasta supper under Mike’s direction. I awoke in the middle of the night listening to a far-off train over the forests somewhere deep in the Missouri Bootheel, on the Illinois side a truck rumbling up Hwy 3, and in between: the roaring of the river as it rolled over the shoaling at the top of Dogtooth island.”

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