Artists Panel

The Mississippi River Tales Mural is the largest and most dramatic of Cape Girardeau's murals. The one thousand one hundred-foot-long mural contains twenty-four panels, measuring fifteen feet high and covering nearly eighteen thousand square feet of the downtown floodwall. For eight months, from April to November 2004, Chicago artist Thomas Melvin and his lead portrait artist Cameron Pfiffner directed the painting after Melvin had completed a great deal of research on the community. Portrayed here are cliff swallows, birds that often build nests made of mud under bridges, just as they had under the Old Mississippi River Bridge. Following the demolition of this bridge, cliff swallows returned, making new homes under the Emerson Memorial Bridge.

Cape Girardeau, Missouri · United States