A Dedication to Frontier Life

Our adventures climbing trees in Hermann didn't end there. Our next stop was Kansas City, Missouri with time only to see this one gem: Steamboat Arabia Museum.

The Arabia was a side wheel steamer build in Brownsville, PA in 1853. She measured 171 feet long and was capable of carrying 222 tons. Against the Missouri's dangerous current, the twin 28-foot tall paddlewheels could push the steamboat upstream at a speed of over 5 miles an hour. The Arabia was considered a dependable vessel and soon gained a reputation for speed, safety and comfort.

While journeying up the Missouri it snagged on the roots of a waterlogged elm tree and quickly sank. The swift waters buried her in several feet of thick mud where it remained preserved until it was excavated in the 1980s. Special trucks and bulldozers tackled the job of unearthing her deep beneath a Kansas farm field.

The museum is a virtual time capsule of the steamboat with one of the best collections of pre-Civil war artifacts in the world. There is glass display of hundreds of boots and shoes from the era and another of dishes, furniture and even jars of pickles that are still bright green. One of the excavators actually ate one of these 130 year old pickles and said it tasted very good.

This museum is definitely worthy of a longer visit the next time I'm in town.