Jack Libbey
River boat pilot
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Captain
Jack Libbey has been a master pilot on the Mississippi River for over 30 years.
He worked on tow boats for 20 years and has been captain of several casino boats
along the Mississippi and outside of Chicago. Born and reared in Waterloo, Libbey
has a vast store of knowledge about river occupations, including piloting, fishing
and boat maintenance. Libbey was a featured tradition bearer at the Smithsonian’s
1996 Festival of American Folklife and the Sesquicentennial Festival of Iowa Folklife.
He also served as a community scholar for the project and did research to find
and document a variety of cultural traditions found along the upper Mississippi.
Piloting
the Mississippi involves knowing the channels as well as the locks and dams along
the river. In 1824 the Army Corps of Engineers was put in charge of managing water
resources. Army engineers surveyed rivers and worked to remove obstructions for
steamboats and later for barges of various sizes and types. They also built levees
for flood control. In 1930, Congress authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
to make the Upper Mississippi a commercial waterway. By 1940, twenty-four low-level
dams were built and a nine-foot channel was completed, opening a new era for the
Upper Mississippi.
Jack
has been active environmental heritage educator in his community of Lansing, Iowa
and has piloted the entire length of the Mississippi River onboard towboats/barges
(larger than aircraft carriers), passenger, research and eco-tour vessels. Today,
he today provides eco-tours of the upper Mississippi River via his Mississippi
Explorer Cruises. Small pontoon boats take folks out on the most beautiful section
of the Upper Mississippi River in northeastern Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin.
Libbey’s personalized tours provide a fantastic insight of the Mississippi
River’s transportation system, locks, wildlife, vegetation, birds and scenic
beauty to visitors of all ages. Tours also visit nesting Bald Eagle nests on the
US Fish and Wildlife Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge. For those interested in
more than just another river boat cruise, Jack also teaches his passengers river
piloting skills, deckhand skills how to read the river how to lock through a lock
and dam, how to identify river birds and vegetation, and more. Some of Jack’s
experiences on the Mississippi can be found in “The Midnight Watch Change,”
in An American Mosaic: Prose and Poetry by Everyday Folk. Edited by Robert
Wolf, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Contact: Jack Libbey, 563.586.2179 or 586.4444, Mississippi Explorer Cruises, Lansing, Iowa, mississippiexplorer@yahoo.com, www.MississippiExplorer.com.