11/29/2025
The Night the Mississippi River Froze in the Shape of a Cross
Cairo, Illinois – February 3, 1899
The temperature dropped to −22 °F, coldest ever recorded on the lower Mississippi.
At midnight the great river (normally a mile wide and moving fast) froze solid from bank-to-bank for the first time in history.
By dawn, ice cutters and ferrymen saw it: the entire frozen surface had formed a perfect Latin cross, 1,200 feet long, centered exactly on the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi.
Steamboat captains, gamblers, and preachers walked out on the ice in disbelief.
The arms of the cross pointed due east and west; the shaft ran north-south.
The ice held for nine days.
On the ninth day (Ash Wednesday), it cracked once down the center and the river resumed flowing as if nothing had happened.
Old river pilots still mark the spot with a buoy #47.
Every February 3, when the water is low, you can see the faint outline of the cross in the sandbar below, pale stones against darker silt, refusing to wash away.
