38 Nebraskaland • May 2024
destination, that army post wasn't even built for another 12
years. There was simply no fi nancial incentive for such an
expensive and hazardous journey when there was money to
be made on the busy Missouri River.
A Platte journey made no better sense in terms of logistics.
The El Paso's wood-fi red boilers would have consumed about
1.25 cords per hour. Steamboats normally refueled several
times per day, but there were no commercial woodyards
along the Platte. And stockpiling wood on deck would only
settle the boat deeper into the shallow water.
Lass also drew attention to the absence of eyewitness
accounts. Thousands of emigrants were traveling along the
Platte River Road in those years, but steamboat sightings
— surely a noteworthy event in such a location — appear
neither in the hundreds of surviving trail diaries, nor in the
offi cial records of Forts Kearny and Laramie.
But what about other steamboats in other years? Lass
explains that "the Platte was a braided river with many
channels intersected by islands" and that it has a tendency
"to widen rather than deepen during its most vigorous
fl ows." If there's any place on the Platte where a steamboat
might have a chance, it would be on the lower (eastern) part
of the river. In 1855, the Mary Cole, a 93-ton sidewheel ferry
(about half the size of the El Paso) tried to ascend the Platte
but grounded before reaching the mouth of the Elkhorn.
Other documented attempts by small steamboats on the
lower Platte similarly failed.
So how did two heavy, mid-19th-century steamboat
anchors end up near Brady?
On Nov. 17, 1866, the Kearney Herald reported that "General
O'Brien is building a pontoon bridge across the Platte opposite
Nebraska and Kanzas, 1854 map by J.H. Colton & Co.
A sidewheel steamboat presumably similar to the El Paso. Steamboats like this ascended the upper Missouri River, but the
Platte had less water. "A STEAMBOAT ON THE BANK," PHOTO FROM HIRAM CHITTENDEN'S 1903 BOOK, EARLY STEAMBOAT NAVIGATION ON THE MISSOURI RIVER.
