Steamboat J. R. Wells at Linn Creek, late 1800s
A few steamboats still operated on the lower Osage River in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Sometimes they carried excursion parties instead of cargo. Before the Civil War, “daring, reckless and adventurous men” ran far upstream in high water to supply frontier settlements with necessities, returning to St. Louis with barrels of mast-fed hog hams, deer skins, and furs.
Built at Tuscumbia by Anchor Milling Company in 1897, the J.R. Wells steamboat was 110 feet long, with a 20-foot beam. With its barge, the Ida, also built by Anchor Milling, the Wells worked up and down the Osage for a couple of decades.
In 1919, the Wells was sold to a Missouri River operator. In 1920, it was crushed by ice floes and sank at Pelican Bend near St. Charles, Missouri.
From Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir. Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.