The Mississippi River is the second-longest main-stem river in North America (after its Missouri River branch), flowing for 2,320 miles between its origin at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana to the south. Native American hunter-gatherers lived along the Mississippi and its tributaries for thousands of years, but Europeans began to explore the river in the 16th century and settle it from the 1600s to 1800s, with the first European settlers being the French of La Louisiane, followed by Spanish settlers from Spanish Louisiana and westbound American settlers motivated by Manifest Destiny. The Mississippi River became the boundary between the American West and East, and the river became a vital trade route for steamboats shipping agricultural and industrial goods; its capture by the Union Army in 1862 during the American Civil War was a major turning point in the Union war effort against the Confederacy. During the first decades of the 20th century, massive engineering works such as levees, locks, and dams were built along the river, and it experienced major pollution as a result of industrialization, creating a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
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