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Keokuk IA10
Where today and history meet The city of Keokuk has long been associated with thriving commerce and transportation before it was incorporated in 1847. The location of the Des Moines Rapids in the Mississippi River made it necessary for steamboats to unload passengers and freight and arrange for portage around the rapids. Packets, excursion boats, tows, and rafts navigated up and down the river stopping at Keokuk along their way. Many businesses flourished at the foot of these rapids making the settlement a major stopping off point for people and products continuing up the river or being transferred to prairie schooners taht transported goods to interior areas. Most of the earlier commerce was carried on around the "levee", at the foot of Main and Johnson Streets, and in an area called "Rat Row." At this time the city had not expanded up the timber covered bluffs above the river. Another natural barrier was the Mississippi River itself and attempting crossing from east to west was sometimes hazardous. The ferry "Salina" was one of the local boats that carried passengers as well as freight across to the opposite banks. In the winter crossings were made on the ice with sledges and sleighs. Consequently, in 1866 the Keokuk & Hamilton Mississippi River Bridge Co. was formed with the construction beginning in 1869 and continuing for two years until April of 1871. This was the first combination roadway and railway bridge built across the Mississippi River. The construction contract was awarded to the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh which was one of Andrew Carnegie's first business ventures at a cost of $850,000. The new "Iron bridge" furnished another link for commerce between east and west and for freight and immigration. It was said that this bridge was one of the wonders of the nineteenth century - at least to the people of Keokuk. The total length of the bridge was 3800 feet and accommodated railroad cars, horse and wagon teams, and foot passengers. Keokuk was the terminus of five different railroads: The Toledo, Wabash & Western, The Toledo, Peoria & Warsaw, The Keokuk & St. Louis, The Keokuk & St. Paul, and The Des Moines Valley Railroad. A locomotive named the "Iowa" was the first to cross the Keokuk - Hamilton Bridge on April 19, 1871. The bridge was opened to the public on June 14, 1871.
In 1916, the bridge remodeling project was completed adding an elevated roadway that accommodated wagons, automobiles and pedestrians. Today, the old iron bridge is used for rail traffic on the lower level and while the upper road is used for an observation deck allowing one of the finest views of Lock and Dam #19, the Keokuk hydro-electric plant, the Geo. M. Verity Riverboat museum and the Keokuk Union Depot.
Katy Trail State Park - western terminus MO607
Welcome to Katy Trail State Park, one of more than 80 parks and historic sites managed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Whether you are a beginning or ending your journey, Clinton is the western terminus of the park. From this point, the Katy Trail stretches 238 miles east across the midsection of Missouri, connecting more than 30 communities and cities. The Katy Trail follows the now-historic corridor of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad (MKT), constructed between 1870 and 1893. The MKT contributed greatly to the economy of mid-Missouri by encouraging development of several towns along its route, such Pilot Grove, Mokane and McKittrick. The railroad became the lifeblood of many communities by importing manufactured goods from around the world, and exporting local commodities such as corn, hay, livestock, coal, shoes, and pottery. Railroads provided quick and convenient transportation and even delivered the mail. Today, trail users can rediscover the railroad heyday as they travel over truss and trestle bridges and past restored depots, making the grade into towns and villages where trains were once anticipated. Yet there is much more to experience beyond the culture of railroads. Osage Indians, Lewis and Clark, and the Boones traveled portions of this same corridor, while steamboats plied the nearby Missouri River. Travelers will also encounter remnant prairies, bottomland forests, towering bluffs and rich agricultural lands. This and much more lies between Clinton and Machens. Generally, Katy Trail Park is 100 feet wide and is dissected by a 10-foot-wide trail, surfaced with crushed limestone called "pug". Private land borders most of the park. There are 26 official trailheads and three additional parking areas. The park is open during daylight hours to non-motorized forms of recreation.
[Far Left Photo: Visitors rediscover the railroad heyday along the Katy Trail at Boonville's restored train depot.]
The Steamboat Saluda Disaster MO541
APRIL 9, 1852 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. Those who lost their lives in the Saluda disaster
______________ * Denotes Latter-Day Saints.
Techatticup Mine NV254
TECHATTICUP MINE The Techatticup Mine. Located in 1861, was the most important mine in El Dorado Canyon. It produced millions of dollars in gold ore, and was originally served by steamboats on the Colorado River. The mine's name is taken from two Paiute words meaning "hungry" or "bread". Two of Nevada's most famous renegate Indians lived in the canyon; Ahvote, who killed five victims, and Queho, who killed over twenty people. Near this spot, Queho killed his last victim, Maude Douglas, in 1919, and successfully eluded sheriff's posses.
Birthplace of Mark Twain MO450
Florida, Mo., a settlement of about 60 families and several businesses, "...had two streets, each a couple of hundred yards long; the rest of the avenues mere lanes, with rail fences and cornfields on either side. Both the streets and lanes were paved with the same material - tough black mud in wet times, deep dust in dry." Florida reached its zenith before the Civil War. During this period, one of the general stores was briefly owned by John Marshall Clemens, Mark Twain's father. Florida was destined to remain small. The Salt River was never navigable for steamboats. Railroad companies were not interested in building a line to the tiny village. The Community was relatively isolated from large towns. The Clemens family, consisting of John Marshall and his wife Jane, their children Orion, Pamela, Margaret, Benjamin, and a slave girl named Jenny, arrived in the small village of Florida, MO., late in June 1835. They had made the long trip by riverboat and wagon all the way from Pall Mall, Tenn., at the urging of Jane's brother-in-law, John Charles Quarles. After arriving in Florida, John Clemens rented the two-room frame house where Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born (two months premature) in November. Mark Twain noted in his Autobiography, "Recently someone in Missouri has sent me a picture of the house I was born in. Heretofore I have always stated that it was a palace, but I shall be more guarded now." The memorial with bust of Mark Twain was erected in 1914 with Legislative authority to commemorate Florida, Mo. as the birth town of one of America's most famous authors. Originally located at the intersection of Main and Mill Streets, Florida's main thoroughfares, the marker consisted of a concrete platform (visible ½ block north), the granite monument and a bronze bust of Mark Twain. The memorial adorned Florida's main streets for 50 years. In 1964, concern for its preservation resulted in the removal of the bust to the safety of the nearby museum, which also displays the Clemens' house. Two years later, the granite monument, without the bust, was relocated to the actual site of Mark Twain's birthplace.
Vernon, Florida FL466
Pioneer farmers and a few tradesmen began to settle the Northwest Florida wilderness as early as 1820. From a settlement known as Roche's Bluff, the City of Vernon grew and became the center of government for Washington County, which was Vernon's county seat from 1825 to 1927. County government business was conducted in private homes and later a log cabin meeting house until 1897, when a handsome, three-story courthouse was built here. When the government no longer needed the courthouse, the school system purchased the building and used it as a grade school. The building was demolished in 1950. Turpentine and timber industries prospered in and around Vernon until 1929, when effects o the 1929 stock market crash trickled into ever-remote Northwest Florida. From the "Riverport" near the city square, five locally owned steamboats carried on important commerce between Vernon and Pensacola until 1930. The City of Vernon maintains its loved rural environment, and gives tribute to the colorful, yet unvarnished, characters of folklore who are the heart of Washington County.
Beef Slough WI230
The Beef Slough was a sluggish branch of the Chippewa River that provided and excellent storage pond for the logs floated downstream by numerous logging companies. Here loggers were employed to arrange the mixed-up logs into orderly rafts to be towed by steamboats to sawmills down the Mississippi. The Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire sawmills felt threatened when the Beef Slough Manufacturing, Booming, Log Driving and Transportation Company was organized near here in 1867. Camp No. 1 built offices, a railroad depot, post office, church and dormitories to house 600 men during the rafting season. The competition between the Eau Claire and Beef Slough interests developed into a brief dispute in 1868, sometimes calles the "Beef Slough War." The most important result of the "war" was the earrival on the scene of Frederick Weyerhaeuser, whose Mississippi Logging Company brought skilled management and seemingly unlimited capital into the picture and changed the logging operations on the chippewa from locally-operated activities into a major interstate industry.
Historic Meredosia IL339
Legend has it that the name "Meredosia" comes from the French word for lake, "Mere" and the name of the first white man to live in the area, a French priest named Antoine D'Osia. Another legend is that the willows along the lake shore were called "Osiers" by the French or "Lake of Willows." The Illinois River made the village an important commercial center. Early transportation was by means of canoe and keel boat. Steamboats began coming to Meredosia in 1826 and were an important factor in organizing the village in 1832. Access to the ports of the world made the Kappal Brothers Fur Company the midwest's second largest with over one-half million dollars in furs shipped to Russia and England annually. The Kappal Buildings are still in use in the downtown section. The Skinner Bandstand located in Boyd Park memorializes Meredosia's most famous native son. Frank Skinner, famous as a composer, arranger, and director of musical scores for over 500 motion pictures. Played and directed at this bandstand regularly in his youth in the 1910's. The first steam locomotive west of the Allegheny Mountains was built in Meredosia. The "Northern Cross", which became the Mighty Wabash Railroad, began on November 8, 1838 when an experimental steam locomotive, the "Rogers," took its initial journey. "Shellers" worked the river daily supplying their catch to three local button factories. The Wilber E. Boyd Button Factory was the last independent "Pearl" Button factory in the U. S. ceasing operations in 1948.
Civil War - Boone's Lick Road Area MO98
BOONE'S LICK ROAD AREA Missouri achieved statehood in 1821 as a result of the famous "Missouri Compromise." It was decreed that Missouri be admitted as a slave state, but thereafter no state north of the 36° 30' North latitude in the Louisiana Territory would be permitted to harbor the institution." The Compromise left an uneasy equilibrium that kept the country together until the troubles in Kansas began in the 1850's. The first consequence of Missouri's admission as a slave state was a flood of immigration by people Southern heritage, from states such as Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia. Southerners, like Easterners, were on the move westward in the first half of the nineteenth century. Many of these new Missourians located in the fertile Missouri River Valley; Some brought slaves, and many others who did not own slaves brought with them a tolerance for the slave culture. The area of central Missouri having the highest proportion of slave-holders came to be known as "Boonslick". The boundaries of this territory are subject to conjecture, then as now, but in this part of Missouri the boundary can be laid out along the deep valley of the Loutre River that exists 2½ miles west of here. This natural barrier, the existence of German settlements centered at Hermann, only 15 miles to the south, and of a railroad tying commerce to St. Louis, just to the east, would turn Danville into a no-man's land by the end of the Civil War. The Boonslick was isolated from the rest of the slave-holding South by the mountain region known as the Ozark plateau, where (as elsewhere in the South) the slave culture did not take root. Even as the 1860's arrived, transportation of goods and agriculture products in and out of the Boonslick depended inordinately on steamboats plying the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. St. Louis, by then a manufacturing center with a large proportion of European immigrant labor, stood squarely between the Boonslick and the rest of the slave-holding South. In 1861, the area we now know as "Little Dixie" - the Boonslick - was the northernmost pocket of Southern and slave-holding sympathies in all of the United States. By early 1862, the Confederacy lost any opportunity it ever had to control the Boonslick by force of arms, and regular Confederate armies were operating out of Arkansas. It was simple geography and some say a heavy-handed military adminstration of the population sympathetic to Southern views, and that brought about the fierce guerrilla civil forces warfare, practiced by both sides, that most people associate with Missouri's Civil War. All of these factors helped to bring about Danville's date with destiny, October 14, 1864.
Plum River Falls IL21
Steamboats once navigated to this point, where Plum River Falls powered the saw, powder, grist, and flour mills at various times between 1836 and 1885. Near here the Rock Island Military and Prophetstown Trails to Galena were intersected as early as the 1830's by roads to Freeport, Rockford, Polo, and Milledgeville. On three occasions during the Black Hawk War, companies of mounted volunteers from Galena scoured this area for hostile Indians. Display # 1 - 10 of 47 |