Missouri River

The Western Engineer, the plaque's first steamboat, was built to awe as much as to carry. Major Stephen H. Long designed it and oversaw its building at the Allegheny Arsenal in Pittsburgh in 1819 for the scientific party of the Yellowstone Expedition. Seventy-five feet long and drawing 19 inches, it hid its engine below the waterline and turned a paddle wheel at the stern, while a pipe at the bow ending in a stylized snake's head could release a cloud of steam, meant to inspire fear among the Plains nations. It reached Fort Lisa on September 9, 1819.

What the plaque says

Missouri River The Missouri River, created by geological glacial action thousands of years ago, historically has served as a gateway to the West. First used by prehistoric Indians, it served successively fur traders, explorers, and homesteaders. Among the earliest Europeans using the river were the French, who competed with the Spanish and British for ownership of the area. After buying the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, the U.S. set out to explore its new territory. The Lewis and Clark Expedition passed here in 1804 on its way to the headwaters of the Missouri (and eventually to the Pacific Ocean) and returned in 1806. The explorers camped near here. The first steamboat to pass this way was the Western Engineer in 1819. With the establishment of Nebraska Territory in 1854, steamboats hauled freight and passengers until replaced by railroads. A major railroad bridge, constructed here by the Burlington in 1887, was replaced in 1977. The highway bridge was completed in 1939. Today the Corps of Engineers maintains a 9-foot channel to Sioux City, and the river, railroads, and highways combine to serve this agricultural heartland of America. Department of Roads Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Indian Cave State Park — 14 mi
  Wooded Missouri River bluffs in the old Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation, with carvings of animals cut into a sandstone shelter, the ghost town of St. Deroin and miles of trail.
• Iowa and Sac & Fox Mission Museum — 17 mi
  The surviving part of an 1846 Presbyterian mission school near Highland, built largely with the tribes' own annuity money and returned to the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska in 2021. Closed during remodeling.
• Brownville — 27 mi
  A Missouri River town of 1854 that bet on a railroad and lost, kept its arts through the decline, and now has Nebraska's oldest repertory theatre and a 1932 steam dredge on the bank.

More markers nearby

• Lewis and Clark Camp Site: July 13, 1804 — steps away
• Point of Beginning of the Public Land Surveys of Sixth Principal Meridian — 6.1 mi
• Nemaha River Falls — 9.5 mi
• First Oil Well — 13 mi