Before a time when people would look for the nearest interstate on-ramp, they were watching their step as they boarded a mysterious new adventure.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the steamboat’s presence in Louisiana, and in celebration of the bicentennial, the West Baton Rouge Museum is showing a two-part exhibit titled “200 Years of Steamboats on the Mighty Mississippi.”
While one portion of the exhibit portrays the arrival of steamboats in Louisiana, the other shows their existence in the state during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
A series of panels provided by the Rivers Institute at Hanover College tells the story of the famed steamboat New Orleans — the first steamboat to arrive in Louisiana in 1812. The ship began its journey from Pittsburgh to Louisiana in 1811, but didn’t reach the Crescent City until the following year after a number of difficulties.
“Nobody thought that they would make it,” said Lauren Davis, West Baton Rouge Museum curator. “That was also the year of Halley’s Comet, so it made people very nervous. They were thinking that every problem had to do with the end of the world.”
Davis explained that access to the Mississippi River from Pittsburgh required navigating the Ohio River, a potentially deadly path containing treacherous falls.
Then the New Madrid earthquake — named after its occurrence around the Mississippi River town of New Madrid — struck the eastern U.S., shaking things up for the boat and its passengers.
Additionally, some passengers battled sickness and disease, and ship pilot Nicholas Roosevelt’s wife, Lydia, gave birth to their child, Henry Latrobe Roosevelt.
Finally, upon entering Louisiana, with the finish line in sight, Native Americans attacked the New Orleans, Davis said. The ship persevered once again and finally docked in the Big Easy in January 1812.
The other part of the exhibit focuses on the photos of Henry Norman, a man fascinated by the Mississippi marvels. Norman was 20 years old when he disembarked in Natchez from his own steamboat expedition from Louisville.
The pictures, which were provided by the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, show images of steamboats that rode the Mississippi River between the late 1800s and early 1900s, Davis said.
“That was sort of like the grand time, the last moment, that steamboats were so important,” Davis said. “Before trains and cars took over as vehicle of choice.”
Before dying in 1913, Norman worked as a photographer in Natchez for 43 years and snapped shots of the boats from afar, on-board and of the people who prepared to set sail on the ship, Davis said.
Nearly 50 years after the New Orleans landed in its namesake city, steamboats began to play a major role in the creation of LSU as it is today.
In 1860, the Louisiana Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, which was LSU’s first campus, opened in Pineville, La. — about a mile from the Red River, said Barry Cowan, Hill Memorial Library’s assistant archivist. Many of the school’s supplies, as well as students, faculty and the mail, arrived by steamboat.
William Tecumseh Sherman, the Seminary’s first president, often traveled by steamboat to New Orleans and Baton Rouge for scholarly matters and to Ohio to visit his family, Cowan said.
After a fire forced the Seminary to close in 1869, the University moved to its current campus and steamboats were continually used for travel and to import supplies. Students used the boats during holidays to send letters to the school explaining that they would be tardy returning to class, Cowan said.
In 1894, the University’s football team traveled by steamboat to play the Natchez Athletic Club but, like the New Orleans’ trip, there was a snag. The vessel ran aground and another boat was sent from Natchez to retrieve the team, Cowan said.
Everyone on board spent the night floating on the river until help arrived. The game was delayed a day, but the University eventually defeated Natchez, 26-0.
Cowan said steamboats during that time were probably the easiest and cheapest way to travel, which is why it was the most popular form of transportation before 1900.
“You name the waterway, chances are there were steamboats on it, if it was big enough to be navigated,” he said.
Though steamboats are no longer the preferred mode of transportation, they still serve Louisianians in various ways. Today, steamboats like the Natchez in New Orleans provide Mississippi River tours while others, including the boat at the Hollywood Casino in Baton Rouge, have been transformed into moneymakers.
