PIONEER TRANSPORTATION—EARLY FERRIES AND RATES—FAMOUS RIVER BOATS—STEAMBOAT LINES TO ATCHISON—STEAMBOAT REGISTERS.

Slight reference has been made in the early narrative of this history to pioneer transportation facilities, but the subject is one of so much importance and of such immense interest, that a chapter devoted to it is the only way in which it can be adequately treated.

At the time Atchison county was settled, railroad transportation by steam was not a new thing, although it was in its primitive stages. Navigation of the inland waterways had reached rather a high state of development, and the matter of transportation then was just as essential to the purposes of civilization as in this day of the railroad and the automobile, but it was many years before the steam railroads made the steamboat traffic of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers obsolete. The tremendous subsidies granted by the Government in later years for railroad building, however, and the splendid opportunity for piling up wealth in the projection of new railroads and the operation of them, without Governmental restrictions, together with the advantage of speedier transportation facilities, completely overshadowed the steamboat business, and as a result, our great inland waterway system has grown into practical disuse. Shortly after Atchison county was organized, and the city of Atchison laid out, agitation was started for railroad connections with the East. One of the first ordinances passed by the city council in 1858 provided for an election to submit a proposition to take $100,000.00 of stock in railroad. At that time the only means of communication to the outside world Atchison had was by steamboats to St. Louis. It was in October, 1855, that George M. Million, Lewis Burnes, D. D. Burnes, James N. Burnes and Calvin F. Burnes commenced the operation of a ferry across 152the Missouri river. Their dock on the Kansas side was at the foot of Atchison street. Their charter was secured from the legislature under the terms of which a bond of $1,000.00 was required to insure the faithful performance of their operations. Although there was no public utilities commission in Kansas in 1855, the legislature took upon itself the task of fixing the rates to be charged by the ferry owners, in order that the public would not be robbed. They were as follows:
Two-horse wagon, or wagon and one yoke of oxen (loaded)     $1.00
Two-horse wagon, or wagon and one yoke of oxen (unloaded)     .75
One additional pair of horses or oxen     .25
Loose cattle or oxen, per head     .10
Sheep and hogs, per head     .05
Man and horse     .25
Foot passengers     .10
One horse and buggy or other vehicle     .50
Two horse buggy or carriage     .75

The original promoters operated the ferry but a short time, and early in the following year, they disposed of their interests to Dr. William L. Challiss, and his brother, Luther C. Challiss, and Willis E. Gaylord, and the ferry, under Dr. Challiss, and subsequent owners, continued in operation until 1875, when the present bridge was built.

About the time the first ferry was established in Atchison, a number of Salt Lake freighters selected the town as a starting and outfitting point and from that time until 1866, Atchison was the eastern terminus of many of the leading overland mail and freighting routes. It was the natural location for communication with the West, as it was twelve miles further west in Kansas than any other point on the Missouri river. Freight and passengers were brought to the Atchison levee, at the foot of Commercial street, by a regular line of Packets plying between St. Louis and St. Joseph. It required eight days to make the round trip, and in the very early days, as many or four to six boats landed here in the busy season.

During the winter months traffic on the river was practically suspended, on account of the ice. These boats carried as many as 400 passengers, the 153fare from St. Louis to St. Joseph ranging from $10.00 to $15.00, which included meals and state rooms. The cooking was said to have been very fine, and the passengers always enjoyed the best that money could buy.

In addition to passengers, these boats carried from 500 to 600 tons of freight, and the rates were as high as $2.50 per cwt. on merchandise that would not cost to exceed fifteen cents per cwt. in these days. The crew consisted of 80 to 100 men, and the value of these boats was estimated to be about $45,000.00 each. The river then, as now, was filled with sandbars and it required the greatest experience to pilot a boat safely to its destination, and as a result, experienced pilots would command monthly salaries ranging from $250.00 to $500.00. Each boat carried two pilots. A. B. Symns, for many years a successful wholesale grocery merchant in Atchison, E. K. Blair, the miller, and George W. Bowman, who also subsequently engaged in the grocery business, were employees on several of the steamboats that landed at Atchison. Stories of gambling and revelries, by day and by night, are not uncommon, and it is said it was not an unusual sight to see as many as ten games of poker going on in the main cabins on every trip, in which real money and not mere chips were used. Among the famous boats on the river in the early days were the “Hesperian,” which burned near Atchison in 1859; the “Converse,” “Kate Kinney,” “Fort Aubrey,” “Morning Star,” “John D. Perry,” “Sioux City,” “Omaha,” “Carrier,” and the “James H. Lucas,” which made the record run from St. Louis to St. Joseph, encompassing the trip in fifty-nine hours and twenty-two minutes, were among the well known boats that docked at the Atchison levee from time to time. The leading wharfmaster of the steamboat days was Mike Finney, who was the father of Atchison’s present mayor (1915). James H. Garside succeeded him and remained in the position until steamboat days had passed. Had the Missouri river been the beneficiary of the bounty of the Government, as the railroads were in that day, it would still be a splendid auxiliary of our transportation system. The Missouri river, so far as Atchison is concerned, is in the same condition it was in when Mark Twain made an early trip on it from St. Louis to St. Joseph. In “Roughing It,” he said:

“We were six days going from St. Louis to St. Joseph, a trip that was so dull and sleepy and eventless, that it has left no more impression on my memory than if its duration had been six minutes instead of that many days. No record is left in my mind now concerning it, but a confused jumble of savage looking snags, which we deliberately walked over with one wheel or the other; and of reefs which we butted and butted and then retired from, and 154climbed over in some softer place; and of sand bars which we roosted on occasionally and rested, and then got our crutches and sparred over. In fact the boat might as well have gone to St. Joseph by............