Cairo Info

[FalstaffBlues]

Originally Posted by atler8

It seems apparent that you are correct in your view of Dickens's opinion of Cairo. Even at it's high point, Cairo would have fared badly in comparison to the might of the London of the 1840's.

As is the case with Cairo, Il., many other American river cities, both large & small, have also declined or at least significantly lost their original river-based economic might &/or population.

The Mississippi River is lined with the remains of what were often these "brief, shiny objects", so to speak in terms of their brief periods of booming population & prosperity. Whether fueled by the shipping of cotton, or timber or lead or general agriculture, each of them swelled until the bubble burst whatever the reasons(s) for that may have been.

Some still relatively large American cities that today are nowhere near as important on a national level as they once were in the 1800's, think of St. Louis, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Memphis & Louisville, for example.

Cairo is just a particularly desperately poor and tiny shell of it's former self & a place that has become synonymous with economic decay & dislocation.

There's still hope for river commerce! One group with many ports already under contract want to start bringing ocean cargo containers up the Mississippi. Essentially, west coast ports are super busy and slow. Once you get your containers off the ship and onto a train it has to go to Chicago where the rail system is at capacity and slow. The Panama canal just finished a massive expansion which means Pacific container cargo can be moved to gulf ports efficiently.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhUl4-XEBVc&t=172s