Steamboats West: The 1859 American Fur Company Missouri River Expedition (Volume 25) (Western Lands and Waters Series) - Hardcover

Larsen, Lawrence H.; Cottrell, Barbara J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870623850 ISBN 13: 9780870623851

Publisher: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2010

Synopsis

In 1859, the American Fur Company set out on what would then be the longest steamboat trip in North American history—a headline-making, 6,200-mile trek along the Missouri River from St. Louis to Fort Benton in present-day Montana, and back again. Steamboats West is an adventure story that navigates the rocky rapids of the upper Missouri to offer a fascinating account of travel to the raw frontier past the pale of settlement. It was a venture that extended trade deep into the Northwest and made an enormous stride in transportation.

Drawing on the journals of Dr. Elias Marsh and Charles Henry Weber and the official accounts of Charles P. Chouteau and Capt. William Franklin Raynolds, who traveled aboard the steamboats Spread Eagle and Chippewa, authors Lawrence H. Larsen and Barbara J. Cottrell weave together firsthand accounts of the river journey with helpful commentary. Along the way, they interject the river’s environmental history and portraits of the Native peoples who lived along the upper Missouri. Marsh and Weber remark on everything from the Montana landscape to mosquitoes to Mandan villages, and Weber’s never-before-published journal illustrates the recent technological changes that made their voyage possible.

In the years after the Lewis and Clark expedition and before the Civil War, steamboats were crucial in establishing commercial water routes in the inland West. Larsen and Cottrell’s depiction of this one celebrated ride brings steamboat transport back to life as modern, fast, and imposing—an apt symbol of the westward expansion that spawned it.

About this title

About the Author:

Lawrence H. Larsen, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, is author of fifteen books, including A History of Missouri: Volume VI, 1953 to 2003; Federal Justice in Western Missouri; and The Urban West at the End of the Frontier.

Barbara J. Cottrell is an archivist with the National Archives and Records Administration in Kansas City, a coauthor of Upstream Metropolis: An Urban Biography of Omaha and Council Bluffs, and The Gate City: A History of Omaha.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Arthur H. Clark Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0870623850
• ISBN 13: 9780870623851
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256