The Rivers of History Outreach Project will bring together speakers John Anfinson and Anthony Amato to present their recent research on the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers at two river city venues. Hosting the first set of presentations was Mill City Museum in Minneapolis on February 3rd, 2005 from 7-9 PM. On March 24th the Clean Up Our River Environment (CURE) organization will be hosting the project at the Montevideo Community Center from 7-9 PM.

Each evening will begin with Anfinson's presentation entitled "A Farmer's River: Agriculture and the Mississippi," which tells the history of the upper Mississippi river from its days of unrestricted flow to today's river system of locks and dams as it relates to the needs of the upper Midwest's agricultural community. Anfinson is the historian and cultural resources specialist for the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), a unit of the National Park Service. He is the author of The River We Have Wrought: A History of the Upper Mississippi.

The second presentation is by Anthony Amato, Ph.D., professor of Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest Minnesota State University at Marshall, entitled "The Flow of History: Rivers, the Past and the Present." Amato delves into the importance of rivers. Professor Amato is the series editor and contributing essayist for the Society for the Study of Local and Regional History (SSLRH) Rural and Regional Essay Series publication, Cloudy Sky-Waters: An Annotated Bibliography of the Minnesota River, by Kris Bronars Cafaro.
These programs are free and open to the general public.

This program is sponsored by the Center for Rural and Regional Studies and the Society for the Study of Local and Regional History (SSLRH) The SSLRH's humanities-based activities are made possible in part with funding from the Minnesota Humanities Commission in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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