This page is under construction: Over the coming year, I will be adding trip reports, photos, journals, interviews and more from trips on the Missouri river from 1961 back to the 1800's. Feel free to glance around to see what's been added.
1913: The Rev. George MacDougal of Olivet Baptist church and G. W. Aulabaugh paddled from Sioux City to Omaha. MacDougals two daughters, Nora, aged 13, and Margaret,9, accompanied Aulabaugh and his wife. The cost of the trip was a
little over $10.
"We were prepared for a hard trip, and we got one. Several times we narrowly escaped being tumbled out. We shot the worst kind of rapids in the river and didn't know where they were taking us; the sandstorm almost swamped us" Camp on Saturday was made just below Decatur, Nebraska, near ruins of a Jesuit mission built in 1839 by Father Hamilton. The mission is located on a very high hill and when first built could be seen for ten miles up or down the river. The article is very detailed of this trip that took place over 100 years ago and before the river was channelized. The talk of rapids and various channels provided a harrowing trip.
Historic timeline: The same month of their trip the Worlds largest commercial office building opened in St. Louis. President Woodrow Wilson sets off the explosion of the Gambian Dyke ending the construction of the Panama Canal. That same year, R.J. Reynolds introduces the first pack of cigarettes.
Click the button below to read the full article.
little over $10.
"We were prepared for a hard trip, and we got one. Several times we narrowly escaped being tumbled out. We shot the worst kind of rapids in the river and didn't know where they were taking us; the sandstorm almost swamped us" Camp on Saturday was made just below Decatur, Nebraska, near ruins of a Jesuit mission built in 1839 by Father Hamilton. The mission is located on a very high hill and when first built could be seen for ten miles up or down the river. The article is very detailed of this trip that took place over 100 years ago and before the river was channelized. The talk of rapids and various channels provided a harrowing trip.
Historic timeline: The same month of their trip the Worlds largest commercial office building opened in St. Louis. President Woodrow Wilson sets off the explosion of the Gambian Dyke ending the construction of the Panama Canal. That same year, R.J. Reynolds introduces the first pack of cigarettes.
Click the button below to read the full article.
1927:
Jim Baldwin and Dave Broadwell, members of the Omaha Walking Club completed a high water trip from Yankton, SD, to Omaha in their canoe named Nismaha. The duo fought winds, waves and fought a three hour "maelstrom", near Blair, Nebraska. According to the newspaper, they were as brown as Indians according to the newspaper. when they arrived. The river according to the boys was at flood stage the entire way. 'There were places where the river spread out 3 1/2 miles wide".
"Up above Sioux City it was eating its banks for miles and whole farms were toppling into the river." They had to haul the boat to shore at Sioux City until the wind abated and to bail the canoe out. "The sandstone cliffs are covered with hieroglyphics, the carvings of boatmen and others who have passed up and down for generations. One man carved his in an exposed rock in 1870 and it was still as sharp as the day he did it"
Broadwell said the main channel of the the stream was submerged all the way down and the water on average is 10 feet higher than normal. "Ten miles north we ran into a maelstrom. We tried to shoot across it and found that it was a whirlpool and one and a half miles in circumference. It would take our little boat and shoot it hither and yon, like a feather in eddying winds. First it would shoot us over to the Nebraska side, then suddenly we'd veer to the Iowa side, whirling on the water".
"We made the trip from Sioux City to Florence, 135 miles, Friday. We found that the river hit the bluffs on the Nebraska shore 12 times and the Iowa side only 4 times."
The year 1927 was during the Great Depression and nearly 100 years ago. Just a month before their journey, aviator Charles Lindbergh made the 1st solo non-stop trans-Atlantic flight, from New York to Paris. The final Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line in Michigan, ending a 19 year run with that model. It would be a month later in the summer when a tornado rips through St. Louis, Missouri area killing 79 people and injuring 550.
Read the entire article by clicking the button below.