Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

In early April 1852 the aging side-wheeler steamboat Saluda churned up the Missouri River from St. Louis, bound for Kanesville (Council Bluffs), Iowa. Unable to push past the Lexington Bend due to ice flows and strong currents, it docked at Lexington's Upper Landing. Among 175 passengers still on board were people heading for various up-river towns, men bound for California gold fields, and about 75 Mormon emigrants, mostly Europeans, hoping to join wagon trains going to Utah Territory. On Good Friday morning, April 9, Captain Francis Belt vowed to "round the bend or blow this boat to hell." At about 7:30 a.m., the Saluda eased from the landing. Before the paddle-wheels made three revolutions, the red hot boilers exploded. The sound was heard two miles away. Passengers, crew, baggage, timbers, chimneys, and boiler scraps were blown ashore or into the river. The Saluda's bell landed high up the river bank, as did a 600 pound safe with a yellow spotted dog (killed) leashed to it. Two-thirds of the boat, everything above the lower deck and extending back to the wheelhouse, was blown away. Currents moved the Saluda's remains back against the levee, its stern section underneath several feet of water. Estimates of the dead and missing vary from 26 to 135. Best eye-witness accounts say about 75 were killed or lost and presumed dead, and three dozen injured. Captain Belt was killed. Only three officers survived. Lexington's shocked citizens rallied heroically to rescue victims, nurse the wounded, raise funds for those who lost everything, and find homes for orphans. Twenty-one victims were buried in Lexington that terrible Friday. Most survivors quickly found other transportation and continued their journeys. The Saluda disaster ranks as one of the worst steamboat tragedies, perhaps the worst, on the Missouri River. It caused the U.S. Congress that year to enact new operating rules and stricter inspection standards for steamboats.

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