Video
Steamboats on the Missouri
Transcript
Steamboats 3:43 minute story of the Missouri National Recreational River Narrative Script
♫ [ Music plays ] ♫
[ Steamboat horn ]
[ Steamboat whistle ]
LISA YAGER: If you can transport yourself in your mind back to historic days, you can think about when the steamboats were going upstream or downstream along the river.
[ Steamboat horn ]
DOUG HAAR: The steamboat business took place on the Missouri between the 1840s and the 1880s. Gold was discovered in Montana, and Yankton advertised that the safest way to get the gold back down was by using steamboats. They figured in 1865 alone, something like $25 million dollars in gold dust came out of Montana on steamboats back downriver. [ Steamboat whistles, crowd noise, horses ]
TIM COWMAN: There was a lot of activity, a lot of trade. If we were back here in the mid-1800s, we would see on a daily basis steamboats going by this point carrying supplies and people.
[ Steam whistles, crowd noise ]
DOUG HAAR: There were two contracts that were issued by the government. One contract as to supply all the forts on the Upper Missouri, which is 1,955 miles. The other contract was for all the Indian Agencies, as they referred to them in those days. They hauled an incredible amount of freight. A large steamboat was 190 feet long, 33 feet in width, and she would only draw, like, 18 inches of water when she was fully loaded, which is pretty incredible. TIM COWMAN: They had furnaces that burned wood, so a lot of the landowners would create their own woodpiles by the river, and it was essentially gas stations for the steamboats.
[ Explosions ] [ Fire crackles, people stream ] DOUG HAAR: They were very dangerous. Boilers could explode. There were a number of boats that simply blew up. TIM COWMAN: This section of the Missouri is sort of a textbook example of how unpredictable the Missouri River was.
REPORTER: No stretch of water on the globe has swallowed up as much wealth as the Missouri River. Its shifting sands and numerous snags have sent many a boat to the bottom.
♫ ♫ ♫
DOUG HAAR: From St. Louis up through Yankton area, there were over 200 boats that were lost on the Missouri River. The sandbars were very, very difficult, and it took a trained eye from the steamboat men or the pilot to actually navigate. You’d look at the water, and it looked like it was maybe 10 or 12 feet deep, when in fact, it might only be six inches deep. The other thing that they had to deal with then were the snags, just laying right below the surface. They would punch right through the hull…just like the North Alabama. You can see the midsection of the ship. The papers reported that she was splayed open, that she broke her back.
LISA YAGER: Once the railroads came into this area, there was not as much of a need for steamboats anymore. The railroad was far more efficient. Without the steamboat traffic, there was less pressure to modify or alter the river. The demise of the steamboat era has really left us with these sections of river that have not been impacted…that are still relatively free-flowing…that still have the snags and sandbars and shallow areas. The feeling of the steamboats are still here.
[ Distant steamboat horn ]
Description
Steamboats of the Missouri National Recreational River
Duration
4 minutes, 23 seconds
Credit
NPS/Argentine Productions
Date Created
11/10/2018
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