Toot Toot

   "East Coast, West Coast, the Middle Coast has the most." I'm talking about the Valley of the Mississippi River and it many tributaries, an area draining over a million square miles from 32 states.  
   The East Coast was a jumping off point for settlers hungry for free farmland and new trading opportunities. At first the French held the interior of the continent, but they were rousted out by the British in 1763. The British were themselves rousted out 20 years later by the newly independent Americans.
   But Spain held New Orleans and refused to allow the Americans passage to the Gulf. The French snuck back in and sold New Orleans and much other territory to the U.S. in 1803. Then the Midwest began to fill up with American settlers, but slowly at first. There were few roads and the
Native Americans were taking a strong stand against encroachment on their lands.
   Trade down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers was a one way street. Farm products were floated down river to New Orleans on log barges. It was impractical to fight the current to get the barges back home so they were broken up and sold for timber, and the crew walked home. It was a very long walk. Lincoln did it once in his youth and got his first view of slavery in the slave markets of New Orleans.
   Back in New York, Robert Fulton had developed the first successful steamboat. Meanwhile down in New Jersey, Nicholas Roosevelt (great grand uncle of Theodore) was building steam engines for the Navy. Roosevelt and Fulton partnered to build a steamboat to travel from Pittsburg to New Orleans.
   In the spring of 1809, Roosevelt and his pregnant wife Lydia travelled to Pittsburg, bought a barge and spent six months travelling down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to check things out. He bought a landing place in Indiana and arranged to have coal mined locally and brought to the spot for later use.
   Roosevelt's crew on the barge told him steamboats would never be practical in these parts. The current was too strong they said. When Roosevelt and Lydia arrived in New Orleans, they boarded a ship for the six week trip by sea back to New York.
   The next year Roosevelt, Lydia and their baby daughter returned to Pittsburg and set up a boatyard. Roosevelt's workmen hauled the parts for the engine overland because there were no factories in the future "Steel City" at the time.  The rest of the steamboat was built with trees from the surrounding forest. The completed vessel was 148 ' long, 32' wide and 12' deep and weighed 371 tons. The largest river barges were only 100' long.
   Roosevelt planned to take the steamboat all the way to New Orleans so he named his vessel after that city. On October 20, 1811 New Orleans left town. Pittsburg only had 5,000 people then, but almost all of them turned out for the departure. Lydia was  pregnant again and would give birth to their son during the trip.
  New Orleans' first stop was at Wheeling, then part of Virginia. Roosevelt let people tour the boat for twenty-five cents. A few days later, the vessel stopped in Louisville. Louisville owed its existence to a two mile stretch of rapids knows as the "Falls of the Ohio." Roosevelt had to wait here a month for the river to rise enough for New Orleans to pass the rapids.
  Once past Louisville, they enjoyed a pleasant trip on the Ohio. On the Mississippi things got more exciting. The War of 1812 was about to break out. Roosevelt did not know if the Indian warriors along the shore would be allies of Britain or the U.S., but New Orleans passed unmolested. In December, the first of the great New Madrid earthquakes hit their area. These were the largest ever earthquakes in the U.S. Midwest. Being on the river cushioned the impact, however the quake altered the river course enough to cause confusion for the pilot. A fire broke out on board one night just for good measure, but was quickly extinguished.
   On this day in 1812, New Orleans arrived in her namesake city after a voyage of 82 days. The Roosevelts soon boarded a ship for New York where Nicholas engaged in a long-running patent battle with Fulton.
   New Orleans went into service between Natchez and the city of New Orleans. Within a few years thousands of steamboats were operating on the rivers of the Midwest. Barges continued to be used for one way traffic because they charged a lower rate for freight. They also had no engines to blow up and were  less susceptible to getting wrecked on sandbars and snags in the rivers. The average lifespan for a steamboat in those days was three years. Indeed, New Orleans hit a snag and sank near Baton Rouge just two years after her maiden voyage.

Down to New Orleans