USA > Iowa > Clinton County > Wolfe's history of Clinton County, Iowa, Volume 1 > Part 11
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There was in the river a freshness and fascination, now departed from these waters. The sloughs and bayous during the season swarmed with wild fowl that sometimes, scared by the steamer's whistle, rose into the air in a whirring cloud. Deer, standing on the bluffs or cautiously stealing from one covert to another, occasionally added grace to the picture. A voyage up the Mississippi by steamer, in those days, was an enchanting journey. Even at a comparatively late day, so extensive a traveler as that great scientist and lover of nature, Prof. Louis Agassiz, could scarcely express his enthusiastic
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delight at the beauty as well as the fertility of the country along the grand river. Noble and beautiful as was the stream when the pioneers first beheld it and concluded to pitch their tents within sight of its waters, the imagination cannot help picturing what it must have been at a previous and not very dis- tant day in geologic time, when the expanse of waters spread across the pres- ent bottom; when the bluffs of today were merely the banks; when such valleys as the trough in which Goose lake lies, and the wide plain between the Fulton and the back bluffs, were the beds of the parallel bayous and through the whole channel poured the floods fed by the outlets of the whole southern system of British American lakes; when the Red river of the North flowed southward, and the Minnesota, instead of being merely a tributary, was really the upper Mississippi.
Without steamboats, the traffic on the river would have been small. Though the flatboat and keelboat might have furnished available transporta- tion down stream, the current would have prevented schooners being profit- ably employed, and made towing up stream too tedious and slow. For many years, boats ran independently of each other, though, by tacit agreement, they often adopted a sort of system that brought them along at tolerably regular intervals. Fuel was at first, fortunately, very cheap. Squatters established yards at every available point along the river and their axes rapidly denuded much government land of its most valuable timber, and many settlers quickly stripped their own timber claims to furnish the steamers with fuel, which could be consumed in the clumsy and wasteful engines in quantities that would make an English or continental engineer faint. Though snags and sawyers were more numerous than now, low water was not so annoying, nor did bars shift so rapidly as since the land has been plowed and the wood extensively cut down. Considering the craziness of some of the primitive craft, it is sur- prising that accidents were so rare. However, many were stanchly built. Racing was not so prevalent as in the lower river between the rival St. Louis and New Orleans packets, but there are traditions of many lively brushes be- tween opposition boats, though it is doubtful whether any in the old time equalled some of the trials of speed in the seventies between the Keokuk Northern side-wheel and the Diamond Jo sternwheel craft, notably the race in 1878 between the "Alex Mitchell" and the "Josie."
In 1865-66 the development of soft-coal mines near the river led to that fuel displacing wood, to the great advantage of steamboat men. For about ten years, 1863 to 1873, steamboat business was very profitable, and for a number of years after the building of the bridge at Clinton, the city was a great transfer point, being virtually the funnel through which flowed river
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and rail freight converging for shipment. But the multiplication of north and south Iowa railways and the construction of numerous bridges has greatly diminished that traffic. The river has been of great service to both Clinton and Lyons, as well as the back country, in providing cheap fuel, wood and coal being brought by barges at minimum cost. Discriminating railway tariffs, obliging shippers to send grain through to Chicago, have prevented the development of the warehouse and elevator business that was fondly hoped for in the early days before the practical omnipotence of railroads was demon- strated.
RAILROADS VS. RIVERS.
The records kept by bridges across the Mississippi of the steamboats and barges passing up and down through them, show that the tonnage of the river's through traffic is materially diminishing each successive year, and gradually seeking the railroads. If the same decline continues for the next decade that has existed for the past one, 1869 to 1879, the remuneration for river transportation companies will produce small profits for those engaged in the business. The navigable season is growing shorter year by year. The brief space of time between the opening and closing of navigation on the upper Mississippi, at a season of the year when but a small portion of the Northwest are seeking a market, seriously impairs its usefulness for carrying purposes. Before the advent of the immense net-work of railroads that now invade every productive portion of the western states and territories, it was customary to haul the products from great distances in the interior to the river towns, store them and await the opening of navigation ; but the railroads have revolutionized this custom, and the products that formerly sought the river towns for re-shipment, now pass through on the great trunk lines lead- ing to Chicago. The uncertain stages of water in the river destroy the con- fidence in shipping, and persons desiring to ship ordinary classes of products prefer the rail lines that run parallel with it from St. Paul to St. Louis, even at greater rates than could be secured by the water route. The volume of water in the river is gradually growing less and various causes are assigned for it. We do not know that any scientific investigation has been had as to the real cause, but innumerable theories are set forth. Among them we pre- sent the following as having come to our knowledge: The settlement of the country and breaking up of the land adjacent to the great river and its tribu- taries, causing the heavy rainfalls that formerly augmented these streams to soak into the ground, is assigned by some as the cause. By others it is claimed that the fall of snow is diminishing in the upper country, and the cutting of
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such immense quantities of the pine forests causes the actual snow-fall to melt very rapidly in the spring, and pass away with such rapidity as to make the volume of water reaching the Mississippi of brief benefit, causing it to be high for a time and to recede quickly, so as to make its results less apparent than in former years. These and many other various reasons are put forth for the low water, but all concede these great points: That the volume of water in the river is gradually diminishing; that navigation is becoming more difficult and expensive, and that the business seeking the river is, year by year, falling off, while the railroad tonnage is rapidly increasing. As to the benefit to the navigation of the river by the improvement to the Rock Island and Keokuk rapids, there are conflicting opinions, and the question admits of many views, from diverse standpoints. Looking at it practically, and in the light of the last ten years' experience, it can hardly be claimed that the benefit from this improvement has been commensurate with the expenditure upon it.
Nature has decreed that the river will ever stand as a monitor and regu- lator of rates of shipment from the interior states to the seaboard, and as an invincible champion of the millions of people on its banks against any future extortions by all-rail routes, and, viewed from this light, the improvements have been, and will continue to be, of value. The reasons for the great de- cline in the river business are obvious. First, the change in the mode and manner of doing product business requires it to be done in the shortest pos- sible time; and the railroads, crossing the river at all important points, pene- trate the country where the bulk of grain is raised, gather it up in car-loads, and when once in the train, consume no more time in reaching the market at Chicago than it would by stopping for re-shipment at the river crossing; and while Chicago is a market at all times of the year, having unequaled facilities to handle it expeditiously, there is no town on the Mississippi possessing these advantages. They can only take what is required for home consumption.
All towns and cities on the upper river may be compared to mere way stations on the rail and water routes, Chicago, the great entrepot of the west, being a trans-shipping point for all western products, and a market that can be relied on, quickly reached, and making rapid returns to the provincial grain- dealer, enabling him to do a heavy business on a small capital. No such facilities are afforded by any other point on the river route. Returns are naturally so slow, and a market so uncertain by river lines, consequently mak- ing a heavy capital necessary, that they are being practically abandoned, and almost the entire product of the West is seeking the all-rail routes to the sea- board. Notwithstanding the facts and observation herein set forth, we must not lose sight of the item of the enormous lumber business done on the
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Mississippi river, which amounted in 1879 to one billion, three hundred and fifty million feet, making this grand stream of incalculable value as a means for the transportation and distribution of this business; and in point of value, its greatest benefits to the people at the present time are in this direction.
The following table gives the number of boats passing Clinton bridge in both directions. The figures are suggestive :
Year.
Boats.
Barges.
Year.
Boats.
Barges.
1865
1,049
514
1872
1,614
556
1866
865
697
1873
.2,035
393
1867
726
391
1874
. 2,405
641
1868
1,252
321
1875
2,461
736
1869
1,058
540
1876
2,986
991
1870
1,508
439
1877
. 2,763
617
1871
1,334
540
1878
1,950
913
The large increase from 1867 to 1878 indicates not so much the growth of river through traffic, as the development of the tow method of bringing down rafts, and the number of trips made by the raft steamers.
The following table of the first and last boats each year to pass the Clin- ton bridge, affords a record of the virtual opnening and closing of nav- igation :
Year.
First Boat.
1865-Benton
March 20
1866-Means
March 31
1 867 -- Savanna .April 7
1868-Iowa City March 19
1869-I. C. Gault March 29
I. C. Gault November 30
Lyons City December 16
Minnie Wells
November 22
C. Lamb November 20
Lyons City November 19
Lafe Lamb November 19
Savanna November 22
Lyons City November 28
Emma
December 20
Park Painter December 7
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1870-I. C. Gault. March 29
1871-Lyons City March 9
1872-Clyde March 31
1873-Tidal Wave March 27
1874-Emma March 18 1875-D. A. McDonald. ... April 5 1876-Augusta January 2 1877-Lyons City February 28 1878-D. A. McDonald. February 25 1879-Niota Belle . March 14
Last Boat.
Flora December I
Lyons City December 9
Imperial November 28
Lone Star December 7
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During nearly all of the winter of 1877-78, steamers could have run above this point without being impeded by the ice.
(From 1879 to 1902, the facts concerning boats passing was not obtain- able by the historian).
1902-Glenmont March 28 City of Hudson . November 20
1903-Artemus Gates March 12 Minnie Schneider .November 19
1904-Artemus Gates March 28 Artemus Gates November 29
1905-Artemus Gates March 24 Artemus Gates December 3 1906-
1907-Artemus Gates March 15 Artemus Gates December 4 1908-Artemus Gates March 12
Artemus Gates November 19 1909-
1909-On March 26th the "Marion" was the first to pass under the new bridge. The draw was first opened, being swung by hand, on March 28th, for the "Arthur S." The "Artemus Gates" was the last regular boat this year, passing on December 7th, but the draw was opened December 27th to allow a dredge boat to pass.
1910-Artemus Gates .. . . March 18
RIVER TRANSPORTATION LINES.
The first company organized by a consolidation of independent owners was the Galena, Dubuque & Minnesota Packet Company. The "Itasca," "War Eagle," "Alhambra," "Galena" and "Northern Light" are well remembered as old favorites.
In 1858, the Northern line was organized and for many years ran power- ful packets between St. Louis and St. Paul. The "Pembina," "Minnesota," and their consorts for several years offered safe and convenient transit to points above and below.
In 1867, the White Collar line, so named from a white band around the smoke-stacks, extended their trips southward to St. Louis.
In 1873 another consolidation resulted in the establishment of the Keo- kuk Northern line, which has, notwithstanding severe losses by fire and ice in Alton slough and at the St. Louis levee, as well as from low water delays, bravely maintained river travel and greatly increased the comfort of travel- ers, especially by abolishing the bars on the boats. Commodore W. F. David- son controls the line, which is represented at Clinton by F. A. Seavey, who occupies the Bucher warehouse. The present fleet numbers from nine to
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twelve steamers, both side and stern wheel, ranging in carrying capacity from five hundred to one thousand tons. With an increasing summer pleasure travel, stimulated by the opening of new Northern resorts and epidemics in the South, passenger traffic bids fair to develop to an extent that will make the river men as sanguine and prosperous as ever. The use of the river for cheap excursions has afforded wholesome recreation to thousands of persons in Clin- ton county during the past twenty years. To many they are the only available opportunity for an outing.
In 1867, the Diamond Jo line was established, plying between Fulton and St. Paul and affording a competing route northward for Clinton and Lyons. In 1877 the line was extended southward to Burlington, and during the pres- ent year to St. Louis. The line comprises seven large boats, Joseph Reynolds, of Winona, its owner and manager, believing stern-wheelers more profitable than side-wheel boats, especially in consideration of frequent seasons of low water and the fact that the debris from saw-mills in Minnesota is perceptibly increasing the number and height of the bars in the upper river. Col. I. G. Magill is the Clinton manager of the line's business, occupying two ware- houses, one constructed during the last year upon a massive artificial levee of stone. G. W. Brayton & Son are Lyons agents for both lines.
The Keokuk Northern line continued its line of sidewheel steamers until 1890, in the trade between St. Louis and St. Paul, when finally the conditions became such that the business was no longer profitable. During the nineties they ran boats at intervals of two days, usually, and kept for some time a fleet of twelve boats. In their palmy days they ran one to two boats each day. Among the boats which bore their emblem may be named the following : "St. Paul," "Dubuque," "Lake Superior," "Tom Jasper," "Minneapolis," "Phil Sheridan," "Rock Island," "Andy Johnson" and "Centennial." Their busi- ness was principally the carrying of passengers, and just before and during the hard times the amount of pleasure traveling declined very greatly.
The Diamond Jo line gave its attention mostly to the carrying of freight until the withdrawal of the Keokuk Northern left the Diamond Jo as the only line running from St. Paul to St. Louis. They have operated from four to six boats, and at present have four boats in operation, the "Sidney" and "Dubuque," sternwheelers, and the "Quincy" and "St. Paul," side-wheelers. Their business lately has been confined largely to that of carrying pleasure- seeking travelers, and this traffice has been steadily increasing for the last ten years. Smith & Oakes are their agents at Clinton.
Despite the prophecies and forebodings of old river men and calamity howlers, the Mississippi furnished better water for steamboating during the
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nine years from 1900 to 1909 than ever before for so long a period. This was partly due to the government improvement of the river, partly to natural causes. But the season of 1910 has been one of the worst known to steam- boatmen, the river being lower than any other year except 1864, and the steamer "Sydney" made three trips this season, the only passenger boat to pass the Northwestern drawbridge. Ordinarily the Diamond Jo line boats run every other day. The congestion of the railway system has made a profitable opening for freight steamers, for besides carrying freight cheaper than the railroads, the steamers often carry it quicker, the boats making the trip of three hundred and seventy-eight miles from Clinton to St. Louis in forty-eight hours, while the railroads sometimes consume a week in transport- ing freight between the same points.
The great volume of traffic on the river for thirty years from 1870 to 1900 consisted of log rafts. The rafting steamers commenced operations about the former date, and their business increased with the growth of the lumber industry, until in the years of the early nineties which marked the high point in the rafting and lumbering industry, there were one hundred and twenty-five raft boats running on the river to and from Clinton, and it was no uncommon sight for twenty-five to forty of these boats to be in sight at once at Clinton. But from the early nineties the rafting began to decline, and by 1905 had practically ceased, and now there are perhaps not more than a dozen rafting boats which pass the bridge. For the past ten years more than half the openings of the draw have been for sand and gravel boats. Be- sides the through passenger and freight boats, and the raft steamers, there have been many and various boats engaged in local freight and passenger business during the past thirty years.
The river seems to be holding its own in volume of water lately, and perhaps the apprehensions indulged in by the earlier writer were unfounded, as they have not been realized. The highest flood was in 1880, the next highest in 1870, while that of 1859 was but little lower. With river im- provement, and the present changing of conditions in favor of water routes of traffic, river men are beginning to be sanguine, and to believe that the Mississippi is to have her second era of importance as a trade route.
THE ENVOY.
In the palmy old days of steamboating, before railway competition began to be felt, and while river communication was considered to be the main factor in building future trading entrepots, the boats did not (as since) run in regu-
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lar lines, but each was a rival of all others. Many were the ludicrous incidents of such a "cut throat," Ishmaelitish competition. The business was almost as uncertain as placer mining. Sometimes a boat cleared an almost fabulous percentage of her value, and sometimes her roaring furnaces and big pay- roll ate up the receipts and surplus as well. As debts held against the boat, captains were sometimes put to singular shifts to avoid being tied up by officers of the law on collection bent.
Probably one of the most reckless of those captains who used to exercise their ingenuity in running the blockade was N. C. Roe, who, during 1855-56, ran the steamer "Envoy," a trim, fast boat which he purchased of the Nugents, of Lyons, when she did not owe a dollar on the river and succeeded in running her in debt to the amount of about fifty thousand dollars, thereby making her, of course, too expensive a luxury for any one to undertake to run. Frequent- ly did Roe presage the tactics of the railroad kings of New York during the great Erie imbroglio, by (in order to have reliable legal advice at hand when suddenly wanted) navigating the river with a shrewd lawyer retained on board to secure the boat's release if levied upon by legal minions. Roe had nothing of the river swagger about his style. "He was the mildest man- nered man that ever scuttled ship," by loading her with claims.
The adventures and escapades of the "Envoy," while under the com- mand of this aquatic "Ancient Pistol"-in that he believed "Base is the slave that pays"-should be chronicled by a pen no less vivacious than Mark Twain's in "Old Times on the Mississippi," and they would afford material for a burlesque as absurdly funny, in regard to steamboating, as is "Pinafore" on the Royal Navy. Once, the "Envoy" lay at the Lyons levee to take on a Masonic excursion to Dubuque. The boat was crowded, but when just about to cast off, a legal officer remorselessly tied her up, affixing a strong hawser to a stout post on the levee. But, acting on legal advice, Captain Estabrook, who was then running as mate, emulating "Old Hickory" at New Orleans, took the responsibility ; gradually paying out cable, he let the boat drift down stream until close on the ferry-boat, and at the same time swung her head out into the stream; then the engines were started under a full head of steam, the wheel swiftly revolved, and the craft dashed off towards the channel, the deckhands simultaneously paying out cable as rapidly as possible. By the time it stretched and tightened, the boat was well out in the stream and under tremendous headway. As the rope drew taut an effort was made to make it more secure on shore just as a sudden jerk brought up the steamer, so suddenly that she careened as if about to capsize. The passengers rushed to
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the other side, and Roe, for once, cursed the men and the levee loudly and compendiously, as the irresistible momentum of the boat drawing on the rigid rope tore the post from the ground with such force that it gyrated into the river, and was hauled on board as a trophy. After several lurches, as the crowd on deck rushed from one side of the boat to another, she finally straightened up for Dubuque, where new trials awaited the gallant Captain. Officers of that city, with liens on the boat, boarded her, and thinking to make sure work of the slippery skipper, removed the piston-heads from the engine. But they greviously underestimated the resources of the irrepressible captain of the "Envoy." Upon finding that so doing would be strictly "legal," the Captain had his carpenters construct temporary piston-heads of stout oak, the engineers, as the hour for departure approached, quietly got up steam, and when all were ready, the lines were quickly cast off, the bells jingled, and before the eyes of the astonished Dubuque officials, the crippled craft, as if by magic, floated out into the broad stream, majestically rounded to, and with bands playing and whistle screaming in derisive triumph, aided by the powerful current, vanished towards Lyons and Clinton, where the ex- cursionists were safely landed. That trip will always be memorable to many of the old residents of the three "cluster cities" who participated.
But, at Lyons, the Captain was cited to appear before a justice, to answer for resisting an officer. As it was proved that he had stood passively on the hurricane deck, and Estabrook, in his frank, bluff way, and with resounding expletives, shouldered the entire responsibility, stating that "It was time to start, and he didn't know of any reason for delaying," and as E. S. Hart was counsel for the defense, it is needless to say that no cause of action was found.
The goings and comings of the "Envoy" were often as mysterious and uncertain as those of the legendary Flying Dutchman. Indeed she was, on the river, the counterpart of the sailor's terror upon the ocean, only she was the terror of woodyards and other depots of boat supplies. Sometimes she would land at a dozen woodyards before she succeeded in finding one where the proprietors were away. Then all hands would pile up the "Envoy's" hold and guards till she looked like a floating wood-pile, and, leaving a card acknowledging the receipt of blank cords of wood, the bristling craft would clatter away. Sometimes she would put off up stream in the evening in gal- lant style, blazing with lights, and presently, with "glims doused" and ex- hausts hushed, would glide like a phantom down the channel on the opposite side, and perhaps next be heard of on the Ohio or Red river.
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CLINTON COUNTY'S FIRST RAILROAD.
Before defining the first railroad that was built here, it will be best to try and define the ones not built, but projected through the county. The first attempt to procure a rail transportation in this county was of the Lyons & Iowa Central ("Calico") line, as it was dubbed. This road had been com- menced and had a road-bed partly completed twelve miles to the northwest from Lyons. It run out of funds in the middle fifties, and its embankments and grade stakes stared the company in the face-it was abandoned. Its route was from Lyons to Iowa City, then the state's capital, and from that city on through Des Moines to some unknown point on the banks of the Missouri river, probably Council Bluffs or St. Joseph. This company was to utilize the old grade of the "Calico" route, by starting at Clinton, going northwest until it intersected the last named line, west of Lyons. As long as the peo- ple would submit to bond issues, in county and townships, the contractors (really all the company that existed) kept the work dragging on in the direc- tion of Iowa City. An immense bridge was conceived of by its fertile brained promoters, which structure was to span the waters of the great river, starting from Cemetery Bluff, in Fulton, and landing in Lyons. It was to be con- structed two hundred feet above the low-water mark, going from one bluff to the other, making a bridge almost a mile in length. How it was to be built no one knows-it was not built!
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