Long-Lost Steamboat Emerges From Mo. River By JIM SALTER, Associated Press Writer
Tue Aug 16, 3:03 AM ET
BRIDGETON, Mo. - The muddy bottoms of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers are watery graveyards to hundreds of sunken steamboats including the Montana, which sank more than 120 years ago.
The Montana is embedded in mud and normally concealed by the river’s waters. But rain has been rare in the area this summer and the water level has dipped low enough to reveal the ship’s remains.
By 1860, more than 700 steamboats regularly traveled the Mississippi. The Port of St. Louis logged more than 22,000 steamboat arrivals between 1845 and 1852, with the boats lining up for miles along the city’s riverfront.
The life expectancy of the boats was not long — about 18 months, Dasovich said. Downed trees and other river debris, ice, fire and explosions tended to do in the wooden boats.
The Montana was built in 1879, at the end of the steamboat heyday. Dasovich said the Montana and its sister ships the Dakota and the Wyoming were massive vessels, “last-ditch efforts to combat the railroad trade. They just could not keep up.”
The Montana was among the largest on the Missouri — 280 feet long, including its giant paddlewheel. The boat’s three decks, pilot house and smoke stack made it stand 50 feet tall.
It turns out it was a little too big.
In June 1884, the Montana tried to pass under a railroad bridge between the Missouri towns St. Charles and Bridgeton, just a few miles from where the river connects with the Mississippi.
The boat struck the bridge and took on water before running aground on the St. Louis County side of the river. No one was hurt, but the Montana split in half.
From a distance, the Montana wreckage looks like a tangled muddle of logs and debris. Closer inspection show rusted steel poking through rotted wood in the brown water. Wooden spokes from the big paddlewheel are still