Mitchel Whitington

No Hope! the Story of the Great Red River Raft Mitchel Whitington

It was formidable and impenetrable... a behemoth of logs blocking the Red River as far as the eye could see, stretching for over one hundred miles. The logjam - dubbed the "Red River Raft" - choked the river and denied passage there. It was so immense that when explorer Thomas Freeman first saw it, he penned in his journal, "No hope can be entertained of the great raft ever being removed..."
While other North American rivers opened the continent up to exploration, settlement, and trade, this logjam made the Red impassible. This is the story of those who sought to clear the Great Raft over the years - their failures, struggles, and final conquest of the Raft.