Mile 952.6 - LBD Quaker Oats Light

John Ruskey

20 Apr 2026 � 1 min read

952.6 LBD Quaker Oats Light

On the Lower Mississippi, navigation lights are placed and maintained by the U. S. Coast Guard. Each light has a Mile Board on the frame that supports it, which enables paddlers to check their location by referring to the river mile locations shown on the navigation charts. In 1882, Mark Twain returned to the river after a long absence, and remarked jokingly that the government had turned the Mississippi into "a sort of two thousand mile torchlight procession." The government, he said, had taken all the romance out of piloting. The navigation lights had also taken a lot of the danger out of piloting, Twain admitted, and had made the pilot's life a great deal easier and safer than when he had been a cub pilot on the Lower Mississippi in 1858.

Lights are usually named for geographical locations but sometimes for persons or for incidents in the river's history. Quaker Oats Light was named for one of the most popular pilots on the river. The steamboat captain's real name was Calvin L. Blazier, but he wore his hair in the old Quaker style and his colleagues called him "Cap'n Quaker Oats," because he so closely resembled the famous trademark of the Quaker Oats Company.

The location of all navigation lights appears on current navigation charts. Since the positions of the lights change from time to time, paddlers should be sure they have up-to-date navigation charts when they plan their voyages down the Lower Mississippi.

The easiest way to do this is viewing and downloading the maps from the US Army Corps website: http://www.mvd.usace.army.mil/Portals/52/docs/2007_FINAL_MSRVNBK_WEB.pdf (adopted from Braggs: Historic Names & Places)

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