The Great Mississippi River Greenway & Wildlife Corridor

I might be coining a term here: The Great Mississippi River Greenway and Wildlife Corridor

Click for Background Music

There are municipal greenways on the Mississippi, research shows a few, around St. Louis, Minneapolis, and even Memphis, good natured nature projects by civic groups and governments that try to make the riverfront a common area for recreation, tourism, and nature,
http://www.planningdesignstudio.com/portfolio/greenways-trails/mississippi-river-greenway
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/fitness/trail-of-the-week-new-segment-of-mississippi-river-greenway/article_1c402714-4d12-5709-8b3e-c334621133c7.html
and there is even a National Trail of sorts:
http://www.mississippirivertrail.org/map.html

but its a driving route that links all the good spots.
I am unable to find any evidence that anyone has thought of the whole river, 'The Land Between the Levies', as what it has very well become, which is a sort of massive greenway and wildlife and nature corridor through the heart of the United States, accidental at that.

A Percolating Renassaince for The LA River

I don't want to ruin the movie magic.. I don't want to impose fact where fantasy should reign supreme, shatter the illusions that drive the American Fantasy Machine, but have you ever wondered what the heck this was?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b08DChU5qsg
or hows'about this Greese reprise from the cult classic Repo Man:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN2AXsF-kwc
Oh wait, we got one more! God I miss the 70's.. how's this for a svelt action hero:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF-dgroq4TI
Go Cannon!
That was so random that it looks like the last time I played bumper cars at Lake Quassapaug as a kid...
So kidding aside, it's the LA River, and what makes the LA River so vital in it's current form is that, well, it's kind of a natural disaster, and it has grit, and well, grit can be in short supply in Sunny La La land, but fantasy there is a business (and tongue in cheek, I will say fantasy is a business even more so up in the San Fernando Valley where the river originates, but I will leave that joke up to the adults to figure out!). So when you are too cheap to film on location like The French Connection, why not run people through the world's biggest drainage ditch to supply a little cement bottled desperation to spice up the visual, even though Paris Hilton is tweezing her dog's eyebrows a few blocks west.. it's what's called character in the land of Sun and Fun.
But I bet a few of you didn't even ever figure that was a river, ever.. a few of you figured it was just some massive public works thing in the Home from Nowhere landscape of the American industrial nightmare, and I wouldn't blame you, but a river it is.. and it used to, and upper parts of it still do, look like this:
LA River Kayakers
http://activerain.com/blogsview/3380586/kayak-down-the-los-angeles-river-
Does this photo seem like they have no association with the videos above?