History of Saline County, Missouri, Part 11

Author: Missouri Historical Company, St. Louis, pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: St. Louis, Missouri historical company
Number of Pages: 1008

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" Mr. Wm. N. Byers, of Denver, Colorado, shows that they hatch in immense quantities in the valleys of the three forks of the Missouri river and along the Yellowstone, and how they move on from there, when fledged, in a southeast direction, at about ten miles a day. The swarms of 1867 were traced, as he states, from their hatching grounds in west Dakota, and Montana, along the east flank of the Rocky Mountains, in the valleys and plains of the Black Hills, and between them and the main Rocky Mountain range. It all this immense stretch of country, as is well known, there are immense tracts of barren, almost desert land, while other tracts for hundreds of miles bear only a scanty vegetation, the short buffalo grass of the more fertile prairies giving way now to a more luxu- riant vegetation along the water courses, now to the sage bush and a few cacti. Another physical peculiarity is found in the fact that while the

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

spring on these immense plains often opens as early, even away up into British America, as it does with us in the latitude of St. Louis, yet the veg- etation is often dried and actually burned out before the first of July, so that not a green thing is to be found. Our Rocky Mountain locust, therefore, hatching out in untold myriads in the hot sandy plains, five or six thousand feet above the level of the sea, will often perish in immense numbers if the scant vegetation of its native home dries up before it acquires wings; but if the season is propitious, and the insect becomes fledged before its food supplies is exhausted, the newly acquired wings prove its salvation. It may also become periodically so prodigiously mul- tiplied in its native breeding place, that, even in favorable seasons, every- thing green is devoured by the time it becomes winged.

" In either case, prompted by that most exigent law of hunger-spurred on for very life-it rises in immense clouds in the air to seek for fresh pastures where it may stay its ravenous appetite. Borne along by pre- vailing winds that sweep over these immense treeless plains from the north- west, often at the rate of fifty or sixty miles an hour, the darkening locust clouds are soon carried into the more moist and fertile country to the southeast, where, with sharpened appetites, they fall upon the crops like a plague and a blight.

" Many of the more feeble or of the more recently fledged perish, no doubt, on he way, but the main army succeeds, with favorable wind, in bridging over the parched country which offers no nourishment. The hotter and dryer the season, and the greater the extent of the drouth, the earlier will they be prompted to migrate, and the farther will they push on to the east and south.

"The comparatively sudden change from the attenuated and dry atmos- phere of five to eight thousand feet or more above the sea level, to the more humid and dense atmosphere of one thousand feet below that level, does not agree with them. The first generation hatched in this low coun- try is unhealthy, and the few that attain maturity do not breed, but become intestate and go to the dogs. At least such is the case in our own state and the whole of the Mississippi valley proper. As we go west or northwest and approach nearer and nearer the insect's native home, the power to propagateitself and become localized, becomes, of course, greater and greater, until at last we reach the country where it is found per- petually. Thus in the western parts of Kansas and Nebraska the pro- geny from the mountain swarms may multiply to the second or even third generation, and wing their way in more local and feeble bevies to the country east and south. Yet eventually they vanish from off the face of the earth, unless fortunate enough to be carried back by favorable winds to the high and dry country where they flourish.

"That they often instinctively seek to return to their native haunts is proven by the fact that they are often seen flying early in the season in a northwesterly direction. As a rule, however, the wind which saved the first comers from starvation by bearing them away from their native home, keeps them and their issue to the east and south, and thus, in the end proves their destruction. For in the Mississippi valley they are doomed, sooner or later. There is nothing more certain than that the insect is not antochthonous in west Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, or even Minnesota, and that when forced to migrate from its native home, from the causes already mentioned, it no longer thrives in this country."

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

February 23, 1877, our state legislature passed a law providing for the payment of a bounty of one dollar per bushel in March, fifty cents per bushel in April, and twenty-five cents per bushel in May, for grass- hoppers; and five dollars per bushel for their eggs at any time. Nebraska did still better, by making every road supervisor in the state a grasshop- per policeman, and giving him authority to call out every man from six- teen to sixty years old, to spend two days killing young grasshoppers from the time they begin to hatch in the spring.

All the grasshopper states now have some sort of protective laws; and if another invasion occurs, by concerted and organized effort the amount of damage suffered can be reduced to a small per cent as compared with our last " plague of the locusts."

PART III .- NAVIGATION AND COMMERCE.

NAVIGATION-ANCIENT AND MODERN.

It is not certainly known just what modes of navigation were used by the prehistoric mound-builders, although we have some relics of their time, or possibly of a still earlier race, which are deemed to show that they made wooden dug-outs or troughs, by burning them into a sort of boat-like shape and condition. And it is supposed that, prior to this they lashed together logs or fragments of drift-wood, and made rude rafts upon which they could cross rivers or float down, but of course could not return with them. Some remains have been found in northwestern Iowa* which are supposed to prove that men used wooden dug-out boats during the age when Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska were the bottom of a vast inland sea or lake, into which the Missouri and Platte rivers emptied their muddy waters and deposited what Prof. Swallow calls the "bluff formation " over these states; and Prof. Whitney found in California undisputable proof of man's existence there a whole geolog- ical age prior to the period when the great fresh water Missouri sea existed, (see note to chart, on page 67); hence the fact that raft and dug- out navigation was in use among the islands and shallows of this immense mud-lake or inland sea, seems not improbable.

However, the modern Indians, before the white man appeared in these western wilds, had the art of making light and elegant canoes of birch bark, and could manage them in the water with wonderful skill. They made long journeys in them, both up and down stream; and when they wanted to go from one stream to another these canoes were so light that two men could carry one on their shoulders and march twenty or twenty- five miles a day with it if necessary. But they were too light and frail for the freighting service of the white man's commerce.

* Reported to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its St. Louis meeting, in August, 1878, by W. J. McGee, geologist, of Farley, Iowa.

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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

The European explorers of this new world utilized the Indian canoes as far as practicable, often making considerable voyages in them; some- times two were lashed together by means of coupling poles laid across on top of them, thus making a boat with two hulls. This rig could not be upset, and was easy to tow or paddle, besides making a sort of over- deck on which to carry baggage. But the thin, frail material was too easily punctured to be safe, and boats made of plank were always in demand. At first the boats were built in the "scow" fashion, with full width flat bottom and full width sled-runner bow. But they soon learned that in order to make any headway going up stream they must adopt the keel bottom and water-cutter prow style; and for more than a hundred years the traffic of all our navigable western rivers was carried on mainly by means of what were called keel-boats. The manner of propelling them up stream we have described elsewhere.

THE LEWIS AND CLARKE EXPEDITION.

The Missouri river was first opened to commerce and geography by Lewis and Clarke, who were commissioned by President Jefferson, in 1803, to explore it. They left St. Louis May 14, 1804. The outfit con- sisted of twenty-six men; one keel-boat fifty-five feet long, drawing three feet of water, and provided with one large square sail and twenty-two oars. Also. two open boats, one of six, and one of seven oars. May 16th they were at St. Charles; on the 25th they reached LaCharrette, a small village sixty-five miles above the mouth of the river, not far from where Marthasville, in Warren county, is now located, and which was the last white settlement up the river. June 1st they reached the mouth of the Osage river, which was so called because the Osage tribe of Indians dwelt along its course. June 26th, they reached the mouth of the Kansas river, where Kansas City now flourishes in all her glory, and remained here two days for rest and repairs. The Kansas tribe of Indians had two villages in this vicinity. July 8th they were at the mouth of the Nodawa, where now is the village of Amazonia, in Andrew county ; and on the 11th they landed at the mouth of the Nemaha river. On the 14th they passed the mouth of the Nishnabotna river, and noted that it was only 300 yards distant from the Missouri at a point twelve miles above its mouth.

This was their last point within the boundaries of the present state of Missouri. St. Louis was then the territorial capital of the whole region they were to explore through to the mouth of the Columbia river on the Pacific coast. This was one of the great exploring adventures of the world's history, and its narrative is full of romantic and thrilling interest, but space forbids its presentation here. The party followed up the entire length of the Missouri river, then down the Columbia to the Pacific ocean, reaching that point November 14th, 1805. Here they wintered; and on March 23d, 1806, they started on their return trip by the same

101

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

route, arriving at St. Louis September 23d,. at 12 o'clock-not a man missing from the party that first started out; and the people of St. Louis gave them an enthusiastic ovation.

FIRST STEAMBOATS IN MISSOURI.

Steam came at last, and revolutionized the business of navigation and commerce throughout the world. The first steamboat that ever lashed the Missouri shore with its waves, or made our river hills and forests echo back her pulsating puffs, was the " General Pike," from Louisville, which landed at St. Louis, August 2, 1817. Such boats had passed a few times up and down the whole length of the Ohio river, and between Louisville and New Orleans, before this, so that the people of St. Louis had heard about them from the keel-boat navigators. They were therefore over- joyed when the first one landed at the foot of their main business street, and thus placed them for the first time in steam communication with the rest of the civilized world. The event was celebrated with the most enthusiastic manifestations of delight by the ringing of bells, firing of guns, floating of flags and streamers, building of bonfires, etc. The second one, the "Constitution," arrived October 2; and from that onward the arrival of steamboats became a very commonplace affair.

The first boat that ever entered the Missouri river was the "Independ- ence," commanded by Captain Nelson. She left St. Louis May 15, 1819, and on the 28th arrived at Franklin, a flourishing young city that stood on the north bank of the Missouri river, opposite where Boonville is now located. There was a U. S. land office at Franklin, and it was the metropolis of the up-Missouri region, or as it was then called, the

"Boone's Lick Country."* When this first steamboat arrived the citi- zens got up a grand reception and public dinner in honor of the captain and crew. The boat proceeded up as far as the mouth of the Chariton river, where there was then a small village called Chariton, but from that point turned back, picking up freight for St. Louis and Louisville at the settlements as she passed down. The town site of Old Franklin was long ago all washed away, and the Missouri river now flows over the very spot where then were going on all the industries of a busy, thriving, populous young city .

The second steamboat to enter the Missouri river (and what is given in most histories as the first) was in connection with Major S. H. Long's U. S. exploring expedition, and occurred June 21, 1819, not quite a month after the trip of the " Independence." Major Long's fleet consisted of four steamboats, the "Western Engineer," "Expedition," "Thomas Jef- ferson" and "R. M. Johnson," together with nine keel-boats. The "Jefferson," however, was wrecked and lost a few days after. The

*Daniel Boone had first explored this region and discovered some rich salt springs, and two of his sons manufactured salt and shipped it from Franklin for several years.

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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

" Western Engineer " was a double stern wheel boat, and had projecting from her bow a figure-head representing a huge open-jawed, red-mouthed, forked-tongued serpent, and out of this hideous orifice the puffs of steam escaped from the engines. The men on board had many a hearty laugh from watching the Indians on shore. When the strange monster came in sight, rolling out smoke and sparks from its chimney like a fiery mane, and puffing great mouthfuls of steam from its wide open jaws, they would look an instant, then yell, and run like deer to hide away from their terrible visitor. They thought it was the Spirit of Evil, the very devil himself, coming to devour them. But their ideas and their actions were not a whit niore foolish than those of the sailors on the Hudson river, who leaped from their vessels and swam ashore to hide, when Ful- ton's first steamboat came puffing and glaring and smoking and splashing toward them, like a wheezy demon broke loose from the bottomless pit. Major Long was engaged five years in exploring all the region between the Mississippi river and the Rocky Mountains which is drained by the Missouri and its tributaries; and his steamboats were certainly the first that ever passed up the Missouri to any great distance. Long's Peak, in Colorado, 14,272 feet high, was named after him.

From this time forward the commerce and travel by steamboats to and from St. Louis grew rapidly into enormous proportions, and small towns sprung up in quick succession on every stream where a boat with paddle wheels could make its way. For half a century steamboating was the most economical and expeditious mode of commerce in vogue for inland traffic; and Missouri, with her whole eastern boundary washed by the " Father of Waters," and the equally large and navigable "Big Muddy " meandering entirely across her territory from east to west, and for nearly two hundred miles along her northwestern border, became an imperial center of the steamboating interest and industry.

About 1830 the art of constructing iron-railed traffic-ways, with steam- propelled carriages upon them, began to be developed in our eastern states. But it was not until 1855 that these new devices for quick transit began to affect the steamboating interests of Missouri. (The first rail- roads to St. Louis were opened in that year; the railroad history of the state will be found in another place.) Then commenced the memorable struggle of the western steamboat interests, with headquarters at St. Louis, to prevent any railroad bridge from being built across the Missis- sippi, Missouri or Ohio rivers. They held that such structures would inevitably be an artificial obstruction to the free and safe navigation of these great natural highways. But it was evident enough to clear- thinking people that the steamboat business must decline if railroads were permitted to cross the great rivers without the expense of breaking bulk, and this was the "true inwardness" of the anti-railroad bridge

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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

combination. The issue was made against the first railroad bridge that ever spanned the Mississippi, the one at Rock Island, Illinois. In a long course of controversy and litigation the railroads came out ahead, and steamboating gradually declined, both in the freight and passenger traffic, to less than half its former proportions.

However, the tables have been turned again; and now, in 1881,

THE BARGE SYSTEM

has suddenly leaped forth to break the threatening power of monopoly which the great east and west railroad lines for a while enjoyed.

The first step in the historic progress of this grand revolution in the commercial relations and connections of the entire Mississippi and Mis- souri valley regions, was the successful construction of the jetties at the mouth of the Mississippi river by Capt. James B. Eads, a worthy and distinguished citizen of St. Louis. This great enterprise was undertaken by Capt. Eads under an act of congress approved March 3d, 1875. It required him to obtain a channel 20 feet deep and 200 feet wide at the bottom. within thirty months from the passage of the act, upon which a payment of $500,000 would be made; and upon obtaining channels of two feet additional depth, with correspondingly increased widths at bottom, until a depth of 30 feet and a width at bottom of 350 feet was secured, payments of $500,000 were to be made, with additional payments for maintenance of channel. The total cost to the government of a channel 30 feet deep by 350 feet wide would be $5,250,000. Capt. Eads was also to receive $100,000 per year for twenty years, to keep the works in repair and maintain the channel.

Before the jetty works were commenced, there existed an immense bar of sand or silt, with a depth of only eight feet of water over it, between the deep water of the Mississippi and the navigable water of the Gulf. But at the close of the year there was a wide and ample channel of 23} feet; and for the greater portion of the distance between the jetties, over this same bar, there was a channel from 28 to 35 feet deep. The scheme has been so entirely successful that it has attained a world-wide celebrity and commercial importance, owing to the fact that the largest class of sea-going vessels can now be towed in and out of the Mississippi river without risk or difficulty; and it is this achievement by our honored fellow- citizen which has made possible the success of the grain-barge system of shipments from St. Louis direct to Europe, that is now revolutionizing the entire trade and commerce of the major half of the United States. The following facts will serve to show what has already been accomplished in this direction.

The total shipments of grain by the barge lines from St. Louis to New Orleans in the month of March 1881, was 2,348,093 bushels.

The St. Louis Republican of April 2d, 1881, stated:

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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

" There were started from St. Louis yesterday about eighty trains of grain to New Orleans, or what amounts to the same thing, three different barge companies started tows down the river with 567,000 bushels of grain. This amount would have filled about 1,200 railway cars, and would have taken eighty trains of fifteen cars or sixty trains of twenty cars each to transport. All this grain was put into fifteen barges, and a matter of 2,600 tons of miscellaneous freight besides. All these three · tow-boats started down the river with a freight list that would have filled between thirteen and fourteen hundred railway cars, and will be delivered to New Orleans in from five to nine days.

"The exact statement of the cost of transportation of flour from St. Louis via New Orleans to Liverpool and to Boston, per barrel, is ninety cents freight and four cents drayage to boat at levee at St. Louis, or ninety- four cents to Liverpool, while the freight per barrel to Boston by rail, in car-loads of one hundred and twenty-five barrels, from East St. Louis, is ninety-one cents, or from St. Louis (eight cents transfer across the bridge added,) ninety-nine cents, or five cents less to Liverpool by river and ocean, than by rail to Boston. This rate to Liverpool via New Orleans was negotiated March 30 by the St. Louis, New Orleans and Foreign Dispatch Company."

George H. Morgan, Esq., secretary of the St. Louis "Merchant's Exchange," furnished the writer of this history with the following state- ment of grain shipments by barge line from St. Louis to New Orleans:

1881.

Wheat.

Corn.

Oats.

Rye. 22,423

February

232,248

126,770

March .

796,710

1,541,505

25,162

. . .

April.

819,038

1,312,432

24,916

....

Total

1,847,996

2,980,707

50,078

22,423

Thus it will be seen that the tide has fairly turned; that St. Louis is now practically a commercial seaport, and will, within the next twelve months, become the greatest grain-shipping city on the American continent.

RAILROADS IN MISSOURI.

The earliest account of any movement in this state with regard to rail- roads is to the effect that on the 20th of April, 1835, a railroad convention was held in St. Louis, and resolutions were adopted in favor of building two railroads-one from St. Louis to Fayette, in Howard county; and the other one southward to Iron Mountain, Pilot Knob, etc." The reason for projecting a railroad from St. Louis into the great iron region is obvious enough; but why they should at that early day have thought of building more than one hundred and fifty miles of railroad to reach a town that was only twelve miles from Old Franklin, on the banks of the Missouri river, is an unsolved mystery. It indicates, at least, that those "early

*The first steam railroad in this country was the Baltimore and Susquehanna line, in 1830; though horse railroads had been used before, especially at coal mines and marble quarries, and in two cases engines had been used on such roads.

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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

fathers" were not under the control of any narrow or shallow views con- cerning the practical value of railroads, or the future grandeur of St. Louis as the central point for all trans-Mississippi traffic. In this first railroad convention ever held west of the Allegheny Mountains there were sixty-four delegates in attendance, representing eleven counties; but practically nothing ever came of their deliberations.

In 1840 a State Board of Internal Improvement was created, and it made a survey for a railroad from St. Louis to the Iron Mountain, by the way of Big River. February 7th, 1849, Col. Thomas H. Benton, sena- tor from Missouri, introduced into the U. S. senate a bill to provide for the location and construction of a central national road from the Pacific ocean to the Mississippi river, to be an iron railway where practicable, and the rest a wagon way. February 20th, same year, a public meeting was held in St. Louis, which petitioned the legislature for a charter and right-of-way for a railway across the state from St. Louis to the western boundary; and on the 12th of March this charter was granted.

Next a meeting was held which called a national convention at St. Louis to consider the project of a national Pacific railway across the continent. This convention was held October 15, 16, 17, 18, 1849. Fif- teen states were represented; the grand project was warmly commended, and a strong memorial sent to Congress asking the public authorities to take some action in the matter.

Such was the beginning of definite moves toward a trans-continental railroad.

The Missouri Pacific was the first railroad commenced and first finished in the State. Incorporated March 12, 1849; authorized capital $10,000,- 000; opened to Cheltenham, March 23, 1852; amount of state aid, $7,000,000; St. Louis county aid $700,000; land sold, 127,209 acres; entire length from ,St. Louis to Kansas City, 382 miles; total cost, $14,- 382,20S.

The successive stages of its construction were: Chartered, March 12, 1859; first ground broken, by Mayor Kennett of St. Louis, July 4, 1851; road opened to Cheltenham, Dec. 23, 1852; to Kirkwood in May, and to Franklin July 23, 1853; completed to Washington, February 11, 1855; to Hermann, August 7, the same year ;* and to Jefferson City, March 12, 1856; completed to California in Moniteau county, May, 14, 1858; to Tipton, July 26, same year; and to Syracuse, August, 1, 1859; opened to Otter-

*November 1, 1855, a large excursion train left St. Louis to celebrate the opening of the railroad through to Medora station, about twenty miles beyond Hermann. It was a long train filled with business men of ths city and their families, and the occasion was one of great festivity and rejoicing. But while the train was crossing the Gasconade river the bridge gave way, and plunged cars, bridge and people in one mixed and horrible wreck into the gulf of waters fifty feet down. The president and chief engineer of the road, and 30 prominent citizens of St. Louis were killed, while scores of others were more or less injured. It was the first and the most terrible railroad accident that has ever occurred in the state.

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History of Saline County, Missouri, Part 11

Author: Missouri Historical Company, St. Louis, pub Publication date: 1881 Publisher: St. Louis, Missouri historical company Number of Pages: 1008

Author: Missouri Historical Company, St. Louis, pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: St. Louis, Missouri historical company
Number of Pages: 1008