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.