One hundred twenty-five years ago, a dignified man with a prominent mustache, made the second notable discovery of his unique career, as it were.

The dignified man was named Jacob Brower, and Mr. Brower had found a niche, a niche for settling disputes, but unique disputes.

Disputes of origins, for want of a better description. You see, there was that time not too terribly long ago,

when we didn't know about the origins of many things.

In some respects, we're still in that time today, I guess, but I digress.

The origins of the day were the origins of rivers, two of them.

This nation's two largest rivers, which are also among the most mighty on the planet,

the Mississippi and the Missouri.

But the origins of those waters, the places where those rivers start are far from mighty. They are humble. The headwaters of the

mightiest raging fresh water in our lands are nothing but actually just tiny streams.

And our mustached man, Mr. Jacob Brower,

was the first person to discover the actual headwaters of not only the Mississippi River in Minnesota,

but also the Missouri River in remote Montana.

That is a feat of naturalism that can't be equaled before or since. Brower actually

traveled up both of those waterways in his lifetime and did not stop until he reached

the literal trickling spring beneath the land from which eventually two massive torrents

of millions of gallons came.

It is fantastic, I think, that any one person did such a thing, not once, but twice.

What an amazing storyteller this mustache to Mr. Brower might

have been, but most of those stories would have died with him in 1905. But the rivers, which predated

his existence by eons, of course, have many stories which have yet to be told. Of the mighty Missouri River, a man named George Fitch once said, there is only one river

with a personality, a sense of humor, and a woman's caprice.

...