Steamboats of The Mississippi - St. Louis

St. Louis

St. Louis became an important trade center, not only for the overland route for the Oregon and California trails, but as a supply point for the Mississippi. Rapids north of the city made St. Louis the northernmost navigable port for many large boats. The Zebulon Pike and her sisters soon transformed St. Louis into a bustling boom town, commercial center, and inland port. By the 1830s, it was common to see more than 150 steamboats at the St. Louis levee at one time. Immigrants flooded into St. Louis after 1840, particularly from Germany. During Reconstruction, rural Southern blacks flooded into St. Louis as well, seeking better opportunity. By the 1850s, St. Louis had become the largest U. S. city west of Pittsburgh, and the second-largest port in the country, with a commercial tonnage exceeded only by New York. James Eads was a famed engineer who ran a shipyard and first built riverboats in the 1850s, then armed riverboats and finally the legendary bridge over the Mississippi. His Mound City Ironworks and shipyard was famous, and featured often in the naming of vessels.