The Fate of Far West: Geophysical Investigations to Locate the Wreck of an Iconic Upper Missouri Mountain Packet Steamboat

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Maritime Transportation, History, and War in the 19th-Century Americas" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Far West is legendary as part of the history of steamboating on the Upper Missouri River. It is especially noteworthy for its association with the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn. In many ways Far West is iconic as a historically well documented steamboat employed in the Missouri River trade and transport.  It's representative of the whole class of mountain packets that plied the Missouri River in the 1870s. She had out lived her usefulness as an Upper Missouri packet, was sold off by her original owners, and ended her service as a lower Missouri River steamboat. She snagged on October 20, 1883 and sank in five feet of water near St. Charles, Missouri. A grant from the Missouri Humanities Council (2085) allowed us to conduct a geophysical survey for the wreck site of Far West. Those results are presented.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Maritime Transportation, History, and War in the 19th-Century Americas

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 126