Steamboat J.R. Wells Unloading at Tuscumbia, Circa 1900

 Damming the Osage  No Responses »
Jul 222021
 

 

This stern-wheeler worked the river below Warsaw delivering farm produce and timber to a rail connection at Osage City, or St. Louis, returning with merchandise. Log books in the collection of the Miller County Museum and Historical Society enumerated its 1904 cargo:

“Here are items the Wells carried that year: 5,337 sacks of wheat, 2 tons hay, 305 head of cattle, 1,439 railroad ties, 445 head sheep, 2,587 hogs, 280 gallons wine and whiskey, 956 cases eggs, 134 coops of poultry, 14,122 pounds produce, 215,122 pounds farm machinery, 8,208 pounds bacon, 961 barrels salt, 16,484 pounds iron, 33 barrels oil, 33 tons coal, 128,403 pounds wire, 41,760 feet oak lumber, 20,000 pounds mill machinery, 123,177 feet pine lumber, 1,852 bunches shingles, 34,4060 pounds sewer pipe, 6 barrels lime, 124 barrels cement, 150 brick, 150,000 pounds clay or chalk, 756 sacks corn in ear, 620 bushels shelled corn and 140 passengers.”

The Miller County Historical Association has an interesting history of early navigation on the rivers on http://www.millercountymuseum.org/rivernav.html

 

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.

 

Steamboat J. R. Wells on the Osage

 Damming the Osage  No Responses »
Jun 112021
 

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.