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Highlights from Past Issues

April Foolishness Revisited

One of the joys of spring at the Big River office used to be slipping a phony story into the April “River News.” We phased out the practice after we changed to a bimonthly, because it didn’t seem fair to pull an April Fools prank in early March.

We have revived a few of our favorites here. Part of the fun was making up pseudo-news stories, but we also enjoyed the incredulous phone calls we sometimes got. Several humor-deprived people cancelled their subscriptions over the “What a Croc” short. (We wondered if they had gone out and bought yellow boating outfits for their whole family.) We heard that realtors in the Savanna area got a few calls from readers looking for hobbit houses. And several professionals confessed later that they had told many people about the schools of tunas in Memphis.

We always sprinkled the pieces with clues, including Pool 23, nail tows and jargon-enamored agency spokesmen.

April Foolishness
Big River Magazine

APRIL 1999

APRIL 1998 Winona County moved its courthouse onto 32,008 barrels and tied it up to Latsch Island to make room to expand the county jail. The Minnesota DNR had opposed the move, but granted a permit for the relocation in early March.


APRIL 2004


People are already showing interest in the prototype two-and three-bedroom units at Savanna Shire.


APRIL 2000

APRIL 2001


APRIL 2002

Uncorrected River

Straightened River

All April Foolishness Copyright Big River Magazine 2013

 

Real Information about the Mississippi

Down the Mississippi: People taking all kinds of trips down the river

Download complete issues from 2006 and 2007

Back Issues

Read Stories Published in past issues of Big River

Repairing Driftless Area Fields and Streams (pdf) The Driftless Area — spanning the river in southwest Wisconsin, northwest Illinois, northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota — contains hundreds of miles of trout streams fed by clear, 50-degree groundwater and springs emanating from the limestone-dominated bedrock. Countless cold-water streams meander through Driftless Area valleys.

Sand Dollars — Mining Frac Sand in the River Valley (pdf)
July-August 2011

Summer of Weeds
Nov-Dec 2010

The Almost-Built Canal: Linking Lake Superior to the Mississippi  (pdf)
March-April 2010

Flood Run also PDF
March-April 2010

The Day WWII Came to Lake Pepin
November-December 2007

Iceboating on the Mississippi
January-February 2007

Look down on the river
Overlooks, lookouts, precipices and blufftop peaks

An Otter Kind of Critter

River Book Reviews

Bridges over the Mississippi

Hand-Carved Decoys (pdf)

More Stories from Big River Magazine