Our History
Missouri River Relief started as an idea and became a community.
Back in 2001, the Missouri River was mostly feared, forgotten, or ignored. People in tiny Easley, Missouri, decided that wasn't good enough.
On a crisp October morning, Chad Pregracke brought the Living Lands & Waters trash barge up the Missouri River to help 400 volunteers haul tons of junk from the banks of the Big Muddy. 400 neighbors showed up with work gloves and a simple idea: What if we got to know this river by taking care of it?
That single cleanup became the seed of everything we are today. Not because we had a strategic plan or organizational vision (yet), but because people fell in love with a river and decided to do something about it.
How missouri river relief has grown
Since then, a growing crew of Missouri River Relief volunteers and staff have been creating innovative ways to bring to people to the Missouri River. Through hands-on experiences, we help people create a personal relationship to this place, where they can take care of the river, learn about its rhythms, and play on its banks and waters.
Take a peek back in time at how the MRR community has grown.
2001
400 volunteers join a partnership of state, federal and business groups led by a ragtag group of river lovers and a river clean-up barge from Illinois who host the first Missouri River Relief clean-up in Easley, MO.
2003
By now MRR is hosting river cleanups and education events in St. Louis, Kansas City and mid-Missouri.
2004
“Voyage of Recovery” – crews of staff and volunteers host a river clean-up each weekend ahead of the bicentennial re-enactment of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery expedition. From St. Louis to St. Joseph.
2006
First clean-ups in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. The MegaScout sent crews out to map the trash along the river from Ponca, NE to the Confluence of the Missouri & Mississippi Rivers.
2008
The “Trash Flume” made its debut at the Mari-osa Cleanup and we started our long history as safety boats in the MR340 Race.
2009
People still talk about the River Camp celebration on California Island.
2010
We started the Big Muddy Speaker Series and the Race to the Dome.
2011
A jam-packed year. After some upstream river clean-ups, the Great Flood of 2011 was unleashed on the valley. As the waters receded, we brought a towboat and some barges downstream from Jefferson City to the Arch in St. Louis filling the barge with trash of all kinds gathered by volunteers. It was the Big Muddy Clean Sweep.
2014
The Second Big Muddy Clean Sweep, from Brunswick to Hermann, MO. River Clean-ups, student programs, art and music.
2016
Kristen Schulte crafted the first Missouri River Days, which would grow to take every fourth-grade student in Columbia Public Schools out on a boat on the Missouri River.
2019
Despite the Great Flood of 2019, we did all of our scheduled river clean-ups and found on-land ways to make river education rich and impactful.
2020
As the pandemic unfolded across the country, MRR found ways to bring people to the river safely. Virtual Workshops, Watershed Expeditions at Home, online library programs, Big Muddy Speaker Series streaming live all kept our communities in touch and our families engaged using digital tools. Clean-ups, races and excursions were reshaped for outdoor safety – masks, distancing and respect made them safe.
2021
This was our first year hosting the MR340 - along with the organizational power of the race founders at Rivermiles. In the Fall of 2021 River Relief celebrated our 20th Anniversary, with a big party at Cooper's Landing, alongside another epic Big Muddy Clean Sweep, cleaning up 200 miles of the river from Kansas City to Columbia.