The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-12-09
VANISHED RIVER TOWNS.
Changes Caused by New Methods of Trans-
portation ON the Mississippi.

Changes Caused by New Methods of Trans-
portation on the Mississippi.
It is the fashion to talk about the
decadence of the steamboat business
on the Mississippi. These degenerate
days, when the business is confined to
few RATS of logs or lumber. short
line packet or two. and one boat a
week either way between St Louis
and st. Paul, give occasion for plenty
of lnvidious comparisons with the old
days of palatial steamers and tows off
five big barges of freight, besides the
loads on the boats themselves, of full
cabin lists and fast time. of swell pas
sengers and big profits.
But the decay of the river traffic is
not confined to the loss of the boats
and the decrease in their number and
tonnage. On shore all along the river
are evidences that these days are diff
ferent from those when the steam boat
man was the monarch of all men. They
are found with melancholy frequency
in the dead and dying towns along the
river, not to mention those other places
that were once prominent shipping
points, of which hardly memory now
remains
There are dozen Of such places.
They were built mp by the steamboat
traffic in times when railroads were
deemed nothing more than remote pos
sibilities. They grew and prospered.
They ted the steamers and the steam
ers fQstered them. Inland towns had
but small chance beside them, and
were looked upon with contempt as
places far in the backwoods, hopeless
ly remote from the channels of COM
merce and communication and forever
doomed to small things.
Well, within the the memory of men
who are now active on the river. Port
Louisa, Louisa county, some distance
below Muscatine, was a great grain
shipping point. Half dozen big ware
houses stood there, and there were
dwellings, and there was mill and
possibly another industry or so. The
place had the promise of growth and
increase. 1t was the place where the
wheat and rye and oats and barley and
potatoes of thousands of acres of rich
Iowa and Mississippi river bottom
lands found passage on the packets
and barges for the markets of st.
Louis. Memphis and New Orleans. To-
day there is not stick or stone to re-
mind the stranger that men did
active and profitable business
there not many years ago.
TIL within few years the
brick chimneys of the mill
stood near the river bank, and APP
preaching nearer to it every year as
the soft earth cut and crum bled into
the water with the floods. At last the
very site has been absorbed by the
Mississippi, and has gone down to
McKenzie's engineers to work and
worry over. Forty miles or so down
the river, thirty years ago, stood East
Burlington. The Chicago, Burlington
&, Quincy did not cross the river there
until 1869, and there was "a prosperous
town opposite the Iowa town of that
name. 1t had two hundred yards of
levee better than Davenport ever had.
and it is there to-day. 1t is buried I'M
ucT d SdnCDdr UldC CEOkcS Cf1o cDdnnol
in front OF Burlington for half its
width, the melancholy remains of two
or three tow-heads and bars above
there in former years, all removed by
the change of currents resulting from
the construction of dams across some
OF the chutes above.
Six miles below there, on the Illinois
side, in Choquoquon chute, in former
years stood another lot of warehouses
similar to those of Port Louisa. The
farmers of Henderson and Hancock
counties, Illinois, used to haul their
grain and other products to them there
to await the coming of the boats in the
spring. 1t used to be race for the
honor of being the first to enter this
chute and tap those warehouses. The
first boat there was sure of load to
the guards. and more than that she
could not carry. Now there is not
fragment of warehouse Or suggestion
that there ever was one there. -Daveu-
port Democrat.