Nate [Nathan] Daly, Tracks and Trails: Incidents in the Life of a Minnesota Pioneer, (Walker, Minnesota: Cass County Pioneer, 1931), p. 18. In 1880, however, it finally authorized an experimental dam for Lake Winnibigoshish and authorized the remaining dams shortly afterwards. Responding in part to Minneapolis business and political interests, he requested $235,665 to construct a lock and dam at Meeker Island, which lay between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Grangers sought to control railroad rates through state and federal regulation and through improved navigation on the nation's rivers. Accepting Mackenzies arguments and under continual pressure by navigation proponents in Minneapolis, Congress authorized the Five-Foot Project in Aid of Navigation, in the River and Harbor Act of August 18, 1894. .65 Once the willow mats had been laid in the water, the workers would sink them with rock. Instead of going to St. Louis or New Orleans, a steamboat from St. Paul might unload at La Crosse or Rock Island or at other railheads, and increasingly, most river commerce became local.41, While the river had been hauling grain since the birth of Midwestern agriculture, railroads held too many advantages over the undeveloped waterways. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Dewey was lured to Cassville by its promise as the potential capital of the Wisconsin Territory. It did not begin building the project, focusing instead on a provision in the grant that limited the company to selling no more than one section of land within a township. Before he could develop a plan for achieving the 4-foot channel, Warren had to learn more about the upper Mississippi River and he had to complete his survey. Between 1866 and 1869, three more railroads crossed the river to Iowa, and by 1877, thirteen railroad bridges spanned the upper river (Figure 5).40 Railroads greatly increased the countrys ability to move commodities, and, yet, railroads would provoke and inflame a shipping crisis. After months of frustration, criticism and failure, Grant had executed a brilliant maneuver. 23-25; Tweet, A History of the Rock Island District, U.S. Army, Corps of Engineers, 1866-1983, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), p. 39; William J. Petersen, Steamboating on the Upper Mississippi, (Iowa City: The State Historical Society of Iowa, 1968), pp. issues at that time included . Image: This cotton . Heretofore I have had nothing to do but fight the enemy. Railroad trackage in the United States multiplied from 30,635 miles in 1860, to 52,914 in 1870, and 92,296 in 1880.39 Before the Civil War, only the Rock Island Railroad had bridged the upper Mississippi River from Illinois to Iowa. However, for the enslaved in the country years ago, the river represented something worlds away from oppression. By 1830, the steamboat age had come to the upper Mississippi and by 1840, there was heavy river commerce between St. Louis and the head of navigation at St. Anthony's Falls, near present-day St. Paul, Minnesota. The first ferries crossing from Piggott's complex to St. Louis were pirogues, small boats similar to canoes, made from hollowed out logs. In view of the hold which this method has taken upon the minds of river men, and the difficulties, uncertainty, and expense which attend the use of dams, Warren concluded, I have determined to recommend the employment of these dredging machines.37 In 1867 the Corps initiated a program of dredging sandbars, snagging, clearing overhanging trees and removing sunken vessels to create the 4-foot channel. Grant Stevenson. 309-10. Note, the other route was down the Tennessee to the Ohio then down the Mississippi to the Natchez area. Without enough current, this happened too slowly for navigation. 58, p. 5. Minneapolis had captured title to the head of navigation, but the low dams had eliminated St. Pauls hope for securing hydropower. . Some easterners came to take the fashionable tour. Arriving in St. Louis or at other railheads on the river's east bank, these excursionists traveled upstream, sometimes to St. Anthony Falls, imbibing the river's beauty (see the above references). 651-293-0200 Having accomplished nothing as the deadline approached, the company spent $26,000 during late 1870 and early 1871. . Bridges Over a dozen bridges cross the Mississippi River in the St. Louis metro area. Doc. Tributaries like the Ohio and Missouri join the journey that starts at the top and finishes at the bottom of the country. Meeker, Kane says, retained some shares of the company for himself, as did his friends. Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing . Washington Crossing the Delaware By Emanuel Leutze Beautiful Detailed Print . As this requirement had proven cumbersome, the company asked Congress to modify it to allow for the sale of more sections within a single township. After Union forces captured Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln saw the emancipated river as a symbol of a nation unified: "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the. Esther (1823-1917): m1. U.S. Army, Corps of Engineers, Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers,1872, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876-1940), p. 309. Lock and Dam 1 would have to be placed above Minnehaha Creek and have a lift of 13.3 feet. During the 1850s, traffic soared. In 1892, Mackenzie again insisted that only locks and dams could regularly entice steamboats above Meeker Island; any other efforts, he charged, wasted time and money.89, Signaling a possible break, the Chief of Engineers, on February 15, 1893, directed Mackenzie to prepare new and exact estimates for locks and dams for this portion of the river . The upper river, stretching from the headwaters down to the Twin Cities, was not used by barge traffic. Frank Haigh Dixon, A Traffic History of the Mississippi River System, National Waterways Commission, Document No. Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long both not only commented on how confined the river became above Hastings, they rowed its width to see how few strokes they needed. There they took a steamboat upriver to Prescott, Wisconsin, some 30 miles below St. Paul, arriving in June 1854. Their effort resulted in one of the most mysterious and ill-fated projects on the upper river. Doc. Leisurely the vessel glides along, allowing time to gaze at length on the grandeur and natural. The best market for the Midwest's corn, flour, pork, and beef, it claimed, was the South. No. This is the general phone line at the Mississippi River Visitor Center. If lucky, they avoided hogging the boat; that is, warping or breaking its hull.24. But it held little chance of success and was eventually abandoned. Petersen, Steamboating, p. 298, also recognizes the railroad at Rock Island as the first to reach the river. James Piggott, a late eighteenth century pioneer, settled in Cahokia and established a ferry operation, providing passage to St. Louis for travelers on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. Where necessary, the Engineers would return and add more wing dams, closing dams and shore protection. This measurement takes into account the full mainstem of the river. As steamboats evolved and as the region's population and production grew, the river's limitations as a navigation route would become unacceptable and Midwesterners would repeatedly call for its improvement as a commercial artery. Or a series of deeper pools separated by shallow sandbars could be scattered across the main channel. As the experiments with closing dams had shown, cutting off the side channels greatly increased the main channel's flow. The conservationist and local hero hails from the Quad Cities, a 300,000-person metropolitan area spanning two states on either side of the Mississippi River. Snags were such frequent and treacherous hazards that steamboat pilots named them (Figure 3). Construction of the five-and-a-half-mile, six-lane bridge cost fifty-seven million dollars. St. Paul suffered a double setback. "We actually thought he'd died," Resop said. Jeffery's 1776 Map of the Course of the Mississippi River from the Balise to Fort Chartres. Why Congress authorized two low dams, instead of one high dam that could have generated hydropower, is unknown. They would build as many wing dams, close as many side channels, and protect as much shoreline as needed to establish a 41/2-foot channel. . This misplaces the authority for authorizing the project with the Corps instead of Congress and makes the Corps a proactive proponent of the project, which she does not demonstrate they were. The desire to improve navigation on the upper river affected the river above the Twin Cities, as well. He hoped to restore the dying river connection between St. Paul and St. Louis. St. Paul recorded 41 steamboat arrivals in 1844, and 95 in 1849. To achieve the 1/2- foot channel, the Corps had to expand upon the channel constriction experiments. A wave would start at the head of the reach and begin moving down, even when the current slowed. Overall, Warren found that those who had been using the river evince a shrewd knowledge of the action of running water and the means of temporarily controlling it, gained by their constant experience and observation.33 Warren listened to these knowledgeable sources, but came to his own conclusions. 84-85, 91. In addition to its transport role for goods, the river acted as a conduit for the slaves' journey to the Deep South. They would have to eliminate the wide shallows and sandbars and the thou- sands of little pools that Warren had once sought to preserve. Annual Report, 1875, Part 2, Vol. Historians generally agree that with the Civil War's end the federal government took a very different position on internal improvements. Sandbars posed the most persistent and frequent problem. They yearned to make their city the head of navigation. Minnesota's population jumped from 6,077 to 172,023, Iowa's from 192,000 to 674,913, Wisconsin's from 305,391 to 775,881 and Illinois' from 851,470 to 1,711,951.9 Passenger traffic became so important to the steamboat trade that by 1850 passenger receipts exceeded freight receipts.10, Before 1866, during the heyday of steamboats, the upper Mississippi River still possessed most of its natural character. In this act, Congress directed the Corps to extend navigation to the Washington Avenue Bridge by constructing Lock and Dam 2.91 While it did not mention Lock and Dam 1, Congress called for improving the river from near the mouth of the Minnesota River to the Washington Avenue Bridge, indicating that another lock and dam would be built below Meeker Island. As long as the Corps ran the dredges, it could limit the depth of the cut on a bar and preserve much of the deeper pool behind it. If the company failed to do so, the state threatened to rescind the grant and issue it to another company. Throughout his article (pp. From this work, Warren contended that in its natural state the Mississippi River's navigation channel frequently changed and that the Corps would have to survey the river each year until they understood how it worked.29 In some reaches, Warren reported, sandbars moved in waves along the channel bottom, looking something like snowdrifts. Before the Civil War, Congress authorized minor improvements for the upper Mississippi River but no work for the river above Hastings. This is a list of bridgesand other crossings of the Lower Mississippi Riverfrom the Ohio Riverdownstream to the Gulf of Mexico. Kane, St. Anthony, p. 175, says Deprived of the navigation facilities they coveted, persuasive Minneapolitans continued to urge the federal government to act. The St. Paul District commander, Major Francis R. Shunk, tried to explain the matter to Minneapolis Mayor J. C. Haynes on February 17, 1909. No. 1850-1899. Contents 1Crossings 1.1Kentucky - Missouri 1.2Tennessee - Missouri 1.3Tennessee - Arkansas 1.4Mississippi - Arkansas 1.5Mississippi - Louisiana Not even a severe t-storm watch was issued. Kane, St. Anthony, p. 96, points out that the state never transferred the grant to the company. From his experiences, Merrick learned much about the natural river. Without a lock and dam, the river above St. Paul was too narrow, too shallow, too strewn with boulders and the current too fast for steamboat navigation.34 To create a safe and continuous 4-foot channel for the river between St. Paul and the Rock Island Rapids, Warren asked for $96,000 to acquire and operate two dredge and snag boats, $5,000 to construct an experimental closing dam at Prescott Island, about 26 miles below St. Paul, and $5,000 for another experimental closing dam for the Wacouta chute near Red Wing, Minnesota.35. Overall the dam was 600 feet long and six to ten feet deep.62 From this experimental dam, channel constriction would grow into a comprehensive and expansive project that would reconfigure the upper river's landscape and ecology. The focus of Corps work between 1878 and 1906, the 41/2-foot channel became the first system-wide, intensive navigation improvement project for the upper Mississippi River. He would become one of the Senate's strongest advocates for railroad regulation and navigation improvement.52, The rapidly growing strength of the Granger movement in Minnesota and the threat of railroad monopolies spurred Windom to address the transportation issue with zeal. In turn, the Federal army would have to march south over poor roads and await the arrival of the transports. 247, 40th Cong., 2d sess., p. 9. The Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroads were the first railroads to be built in Iowa reaching Rock Island, Illinois, in August 1854 and connecting with Iowa by a ferry crossing the Mississippi River. Reeling from Chicago's increasing dominance over the region's trade, they saw the river as their best counteroffensive. Thompson gives a rule which is better adapted to the present project (the 6-foot channel), in which he places the dams in straight reaches the full channel width apart, increasing the space 25 per cent on the convex side and diminishing it 25 per cent on the concave side, depending on the degree of curvature. Warren provided estimates for a variety of projects, in his first annual report in 1867. A day earlier, the St. Paul Daily Dispatch had declared that the dam had given St. Paul a water power equal to St. Anthony, and would provide enough power to make St. Paul one of the largest manufacturing cities on the continent.81 Through a deal between Meeker and a number of St. Paul businessmen, St. Paulites had gained control of Meeker's company and would get the waterpower created by the dam, even if Minneapolis and the state thought it overshadowed by St. Anthony Falls.82, On March 6, 1869, the state awarded the land grant to the Mississippi River Improvement and Manufacturing Company. Hundreds of islands, some forming and others being cut away, divided the natural river, dispersing its waters into innumerable side channels and backwaters. On November 20, 1855, the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad, which later became part of the Rock Island System, operated the first . While mining Fold3 today, I ran across the Citizens Records of John McKay. The island divided the river, and the navigation channel sometimes ran on the east side and sometimes on the west. Annual Report 1872, p. 310. One measure of this was the number of times steamboats docked at the upper river's port cities. Congress initially balked at the projects pork-barrel appearance. By 1857, St. Paul had become a bustling port, with over 1,000 steamboat arrivals each year by some 62 to 99 boats.2, As rapidly as the number of steamboats increased, they could not keep pace with demand. Westward expansion in the 1850s punctuated the need for a transcontinental railroad. It drew national Senators and Representatives from 22 states and the governors of Minnesota, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, and Virginia. Merrick, Old Times, p. 162, says that From 1852 to 1857 there were not boats enough to carry the people who were flocking into the newly-opened farmers' and lumbermans' paradise.. Merrick lists the number or arrivals and the number of boats at St. Paul for each of these years. As Cook had worked for the Washburns, Meeker expected a negative report. Annual Report, 1873, p. 411; Annual Report, 1874, p. 287. As Mackenzie anticipated, Congress, under pressure from Minneapolis to do something, provided $50,000 to the Corps to remove boulders, which the Engineers did during the summer of 1890 and in 1891. Nevertheless, Farquhar optimistically asked for $300,000 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1876.86 Disagreement over the grant and haggling over land for the project, including the purchase of Meeker Island, however, would delay the project for nearly 20 more years.87 St. Paul remained the head of navigation, and the Corps focused its efforts downstream. Harold B. Schonberger, Transportation to the Seaboard: The Communication Revolution and American Foreign Policy, 1860-1900, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971), p. 21. Crossing the Mighty Mississippi River From La to Ms highway 82 . I expect to get through it successfully however.. When the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad was completed in 1854 under the direction of Henry Farnam and his partner Joseph Sheffield, it became the first to connect the East with the Mississippi River. The remaining maps focused on problem reaches or detailed the river near a specific town.32 From these maps and from what he would learn about early navigation improvements, Warren began planning the 4-foot channel project. American Memory Project, Library of Congress. After 1847, as miners depleted the lead supply, the trade quickly declined.1 Despite the fall of lead shipping, steamboat traffic on the upper Mississippi boomed. The Senate also considered a warning from Republican President Ulysses Grant. In their 1895 Annual Report, the Engineers reported that releasing water from the Headwaters reservoirs had successfully raised the water level in the Twin Cities by 12 to 18 inches, helping navigation interests and the millers. Trees filled and enshrouded it. Kane, Rivalry, pp. On June 23, 1866, Congress passed the first postwar River and Harbor Act. Frederic Paxson, American Frontier, 1763-1893, (Chicago: The Riverside Press, 1924), p. 517. Vol. Hartsough, Canoe, pp. Hillhouse reported that the Caffreys work had included 1,600 feet of wing dams. Lauren McCoy dove deep to explore how it was a means of freedom. . In other words, Congress asked the Corps to determine how to establish a continuous, 4-foot channel for the upper river at low water. Marker is on Levee Street north of Clay Street, on the left when traveling north. Where steamboat pilots followed the deepest channel, as it hugged one shore or the other, leaning trees might sweep poorly placed cargo or an unwary passenger from a steamboat's deck. 44-45. Major Francis R. Shunk to Minneapolis Mayor J. C. Haynes, February 17, 1909. Acknowledging the obvious local appearance of its request, the state touted the projects interregional benefits. William Washburn went so far as to purchase land at one of the reservoir sites in anticipation of a private or federal project there and later gave the land to the government. They did so by driving two tiers of piles nine feet apart and then filling between them with willow brush and placing sacks of sand on top to weigh the brush down. Hundreds of wing dams and closing dams studded the rivers banks from St. Paul to St. Louis. Then, they would move to the next troublesome reach. The keynote of the meeting was a determined effort to obtain federal money for the improvement of western waterways so that they might be used as reliable routes for cheap transportation.48 Cheap transportation, delegates argued, would allow the United States to monopolize the markets of the world.49, In May 1873, cheap transportation advocates held another convention in St. Louisthe Western Congressional Convention. From their pioneer days on, they insisted that the federal government should improve the river for navigation. Many passengers came from the East; others came from Europe, fleeing famine in Ireland and political unrest on the continent. On the early part of the journey, before they reached the Mississippi river, they bought four oxen trying to find a pair that was matched and would work together on the long haul to Oregon. At Guttenberg, Iowa, an island split the river into two channels, one passing in front of the city and the other running along the Wisconsin side. Of specific note is the intersection where the Three-Chopped Way intersected with the . Rail lines were generally shorter, more direct, and could reach deep into lands served by no navigable rivers. So, commercial leaders in Minneapolis, supported by the State of Minnesota, sought federal support for navigation improvements in 1866. Key local projects included Locks and Dams 1 (Ford Dam) and 2 (Hastings), Lower and Upper St. Anthony Falls Locks and Dams, and the little known Meeker Island Lock and Dam, which was the rivers first and shortest-lived lock and dam (Figure 2). Because some of the bridges across the river may be under construction, unofficial, small or in disrepair, the exact number of bridges that cross the Mississippi River is difficult to pin down to a single precise number; however, it can be said that there are at least 130 bridges that cross the Mississippi River. Those that bowed in and out of the water they labeled preachers. Rock Island District, Corps of Engineers, Railroad Monopolies The Midwests need to receive and send out goods grew as rapidly as its population and agricultural production. . In these reaches, Warren found that the river seems, as it were, lost, and indecisive which way to go and the pilot is scarcely able to find the line of deepest water even in daylight, and is unable to proceed at night with any confidence.31 The small pools behind the bars would play an important part in Warren's strategy for navigation improvement on the upper river. As the river fell, each wave formed a bar that acted like a small dam. The lock and dam project hopelessly mired, the Corps, during its 1890 survey, evaluated removing boulders and rocks to encourage navigation.88 Major Alexander Mackenzie, the Rock Island District commander who had taken over this part of the river with the change in funding in 1888, suspected that Congress might authorize the Corps to remove the boulders in lieu of building locks and dams, even though it had authorized $25,000 to plan for a lock and dam in 1873. Millers at St. Anthony were profiting from the release of water from the Headwaters Reservoirs, but Minneapolis civic and commercial boosters wanted more than milling. George Byron Merrick, Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: The Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863, Appendix B, Opening of Navigation at St. Paul, 1844-1862, (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987), p. 295. At its headwaters, the water exceeds 12,800 feet above sea level, while its lowest point measures 1,850 feet above sea level. Native Americans hunted and farmed in the Mississippi valley for hundreds of years before white men arrived. Granted, Mackenzie repeatedly called for locks and dams. proof Most of the trail crossed Arkansas from northeast to southwest, entering at Hix's Ferry (later Pitman's Ferry) across the The Saints left in companies and on June 14, 1846 Grandfather with 225 others arrived at the Missouri River, where a large . These slight dams, Warren commented, had been somewhat successful, indicating a way of deepening the low-water channel worthy of special attention. But these measures had been only temporary; high water usually swept the dams away. U.S. Congress, House, Laws of the United States Relating to the Improvement of Rivers and Harbors, vol. Railroads have got enough for the present. Doc. Focusing on navigation, the Minnesota Legislature, in 1866, petitioned Congress to authorize navigation improvements above St. Paul and requested the land grant on behalf of Meeker's company. So they actively participated in local, regional and national campaigns for navigation improvement. Considering the traumas . It had been nearly two years since Confederate forces had closed the Mississippi River to Union shipping. Wing dams especially caused bank erosion by forcing the river away from one shore and against the other. On the night of May 21, 1855, in the area that is now part of the Mississippi Greenway: Riverfront Trail north of the Merchant's Bridge, Mary Meachum attempted to help a small group of enslaved people cross the Mississippi River to Illinois where slavery was outlawed. 55101. 148, 151-52, 155; Schonberger, Transportation to the Seaboard, pp. Studies on the migratory behavior of songbirds are important to inform full annual cycle conservation. This map shows the completion dates at various points along the route westward from Chicago. The next day, the Federals swept aside a Confederate force at Port Gibson, ensuring a firm Union foothold on the Mississippi Rivers eastern bank. (Figure 1). U.S. Congress, House, Survey of Upper Mississippi River, 39th Congress, 2d sess., House Ex. Mississippi was given title to more than three million acres of swamp and overflow land along its northwestern border with the Mississippi River. The Windom Committee Spurred by the Granger movement and navigation conventionspartly out of fear and partly out of a genuine concern to help farmers and businessesMinnesota Senator William Windom asked the Senate to establish a committee to examine the transportation problem and recommend solutions to it. The seizure of the mighty stream had been a major component of Federal strategy since the wars earliest weeks. 32 21.065 N, 90 53.032 W. Marker is in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in Warren County. The river passed over the closing dams when high, but for most of the year, the dams directed water into the main channel, denying flow to the river's side channels and backwaters (Figure 10). The inland and intercoastal waterways, with the Upper Mississippi highlighted in red. Carey's 1814 Map of Missouri Territory formally Louisiana. 259, 262; Laws of the United States, pp., 155-56; H. Exec. No. In this way, pilots hoped to walk their boat over the bar. St. John the Baptist Parish (SJBP, French: Paroisse de Saint-Jean-Baptiste) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana.At the 2020 census, the population was 42,477. . Little and Ives Company, 1944), p. 166; Hartsough, Canoe, pp. To steamboats, even half a foot was important. Nick seems somewhat disappointed in the Mississippi's appearance, although happy that he has seen the great American river. All demanded the federal presence, the federal expertise and the federal dollars. Some opponents argued that it was the federal government's responsibility to improve the river, not private interests subsidized by the government. Mackenzie added that the Corps would have to build a third lock and dam with a 10.1-foot lift to bring navigation to St. Anthony Falls and a fourth lock to bring navigation above it. Edward L. Pross, A History of Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Bills, 1866-1933, Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1938, p. 44. A traveler glides down the river, without much disturbance due to the shallow draft of the vessel. The U.S. Army established a post at the bridge in 1855, when tension was mounting between emigrants and Native Americans. June 4, 2021 7:50 AM. As Anti-Monopoly parties threatened to undermine the Republican party's dominance in the state and nationally, Windom and other Republicans began working for railroad reform and began seeking ways to solve the farm crisis.54, As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Transportation to the Seaboard, Windom was in an especially good position to help both farmers and his party. The St. Paul businessmen included William E. McNair, Eugene M. Wilson, William S. King, Edward Murphy, and Isaac Atwater. 65 Annual Report, 1880, p. 1495. This will then be shared on a discussion board with . That destiny, they believed, was to become a commercial and industrial power as strong as the East, as well as the nation's breadbasket. 1850: Birth of the levee system. 21-22. To do this, they would have to change the Mississippi's landscape and environment. Over the next year, the Grange founded nearly 12,000 chapters and claimed over 858,000 members. . The Mississippi flows for some 2,300 miles, from Minneapolis to New Orleans, and into the Gulf of Mexico. Wing and closing dam construction began at Pike Island at the mouth of the Minnesota River. Snags skewered the careless and even the cautious steamboat. Finally, and recognizing the emerging power of railroads, the state asserted that the river is now and ever will be and remain the great regulator and moderator of fares and freights among the rival carriers of the commerce of the west. Referring to the Civil War, the state implored Congress to recollect with what haste and facility the various railroad lines combined to increase the cost of travel, and double, and in some instances triple and quadruple, the cost of transporting the produce of the west during the late non-intercourse measures in the Lower Mississippi. The river would bind the country together again.77. Raymond Merritt, Creativity, Conflict & Controversy: A History of the St. Paul District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979); Roald Tweet, A History of Rock Island District, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), pp.
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