Take a minute and look into the past. This picture was repeated more than you could imagine in the early days where the railroad didn't provide easy transportation. Steam boats of wide variety made their way from port to port in places where you would be shocked to view the flow of commerce, raw products, and manufactured goods. There was a heavy demand on steamboats to provide transportation for large crowds of people both coming and going. As you look into the picture did you notice the buggy tracks along the docks where early versions of taxi's moved the folks back and forth and did you notice their clothing? No bluejeans and tennis shoes there, they were decked out in fine clothes and even the children were vastly different than crowds of today. I believe that their level of affluence was very high compared to ours and around the large northern port cities there were sleek steam pleasure yachts in abundance.

Even in very remote parts of this country river boats and even the larger steamers made port of call in places that are not on your map today as a port at all! Some of the ports in the smaller rivers and streams in Texas would stagger your imagination at their level of activity. We tend to view the steam era as the old sepia toned pictures have shown us as a static moment in time, frozen and immobile, however the steam boats were the life blood of this growing country and a very dynamic and active industry. As transportation by steam boat provided a way, trade developed at every small stop up and down stream. Goods were taken on and left off and passengers with them. Like the railroad stops the river stops grew prosperous and small industry and farming took a giant leap. Many ports had boats coming and going all day and you could buy a ticket on a steamer for almost any port you wished. Schedules as it turned out was the reason many boats would speed up to make their port on time and explode the boiler.

I have described a scene which may not have been the topic of your history class and I believe we have a poor view of our past today and large segments have been exaggerated and many things have been left out. Almost everyone has heard of the railroad and what it did in the growth of our country but the commerce by steam boat was at least a strong rival. We can find sites to metal detect today which may have never been thought about as sites before. I am looking into the ghost town ports that remain locked into the past to this day and many of these are accessible by boat in more remote areas. We all know the river towns that remain today but anywhere a group of farmers could produce a crop along the rivers and streams often became ports in the past. Begin your research by obtaining old maps and locating the ghost towns along these streams where you might be able to gain access.

In the infamous days of the old South, slave trade brought fantastic amounts of money through these ports as the trade built huge plantations that accounted for tremendous crops for export even as the slaves were imported to work the fields and build the fortunes of the powerful owners. Transactions for products or slaves were often completed at the scales on the docks and the platforms of the slave traders. I have discovered that awesome amounts of gold were traded at local ports for every kind of product. Here cotton growers became wealthy very quickly as it became possible to export their goods. There were towns that grew and as the era of steam boats came to a close many of the small towns died like they did along the early railroads. Look for a few timbers or pieces of broken glass that may signal the location of the old ghost port and observe where old roads led to the river where they are no longer in use today.

One growing problem with early steamboats was the problem of boiler explosions. Our bays and rivers are full of steamboats that exploded and sank quickly. A boiler explosion was devastating to those aboard because apart from explosion and fire there was the steam which had built up in excess and expanded into a huge cloud over the sinking boat. Not many survivors among those explosions but that didn't worry those crews that had to make a tight schedules as all they did to make their port on time was to tie down the relief valve so it couldn't work and then throw in pine knots full of resin which would heat the boiler very hot and turn the propeller ever faster... faster that is until the inevitable explosion. Since there was poor communication in those days and things like explosions were likely kept very quiet.

Another sidelight about the old steam boats is that they would stop anywhere and pick up passengers. All anyone had to do was just tie a rag onto a long stick and wave it from shore and the big boat would come over and pick them up. In my backyard at least, this proved disastrous as the local savage Indians learned the trick and would stand on the shore and wave the flag until the boat came over and then the Indians would swarm aboard and kill everyone and steal all of the goods aboard.

An interesting time, and a time which may have more interesting sites for us to explore today. As you stand at one of these old ports just take a minute to picture the activities of yesterday once more and see if you can't hear the faint sounds of the steam boat coming up the river.