What the steam engine did for land travel — dramatically shrinking the continent, expanding trade between the states and later between the coasts — it promised to also do for water. Steam-powered ships on the Mississippi could move people and goods upstream, creating a completely new economy and  improving the quality of life for those upstream, like residents in the Appalachian mountains, who expanded enormous efforts pulling supplies upstream and up the inclines.

On this day, May 10, in 1823 the steamboat Virginia, was the first to navigate the Mississippi from St. Louis to Ft. Snelling, in what today is Minneapolis. It was not the first steamboat on the river, but its arrival in the northern state marked the end of the barges and keelboats.

While the railroads were still getting built, water transportation was crucial in commerce for all the states. The historian Theodore Blegen in his book Minnesota: A History of the State noted in that state it was everything: “Supplies were brought in, furs sent out, in canoes, barges, boats, steamboats. Water linked frontier Minnesota with nation and world; and within the area it connected community with region. On the rivers, logs were floated to mills in a great lumber industry. Lakes and streams, easy of access, had much to do with the location of cities and towns and the exploitation of the soil. Falls and rapids offered water power for industry, large and small.”