Roosevelt High School - Bwana Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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DEVELOPMENT OF ST. LOUIS AS A TRANSPORTATION CENTER T. LOUIS is the natural center of the vast fertile territory of the j Southwest, and with her natural advantages must inevitably become one of the most important cities of this country. -Honorable James Bryce, British Ambassador, l907. Within five years after Laclede marked the trees for the location of the settlement, St. Louis had a population of about l,000. When, forty years after the founding, Stoddard raised the United States Hag, there were not many more inhabitants. But far more important, every year the radius of the St. Louis influence grew. St. Louis was to become the gateway for the stream of migration, the starting point for expeditions: military, to establish forts, scientific, to explore and exploit: others, to establish communities and to open commercial avenues. ln the early days the supremacy of the settlement depended upon dis- tributive commerce. St. Louis was a distributing center. The city became important through the bringing of all kinds of manufactured products to growing sections of the country. St. Louis was a great market for furs, mined ores, tobacco, grain, and many other products. St. Louis was the sugar manufacturing and distributing point for the interior of the country. It was the center of river traffic. Long before railroads came, lead, grain, and other products were shipped on barges down the Mississippi. St. Louis had l0,000 inhabitants in l836, when the first railroad in Mis- souri, or anywhere west of the Mississippi, was built from St. Louis. Within the city itself, transportation was a chief development. Before IS43, the majority of people in St. Louis traveled on foot. By 1844, St. Louisans began to ride on the omnibus, the first public transit. ln l859, came the first horse-car, 'ia beautiful vehicle, light, elegant, and commodiousf' ln ISS6, people began to ride on the grip and the trailer of the cable. St. Louis was jerked downtown and uptown by cable for a little longer than a decade. The trolley era dates from l894. Today, people who travel much credit St. Louis with the most comprehensive, the best-managed street rail- way system in the United States. ln all ways St. Louis has been progressive in her transportation develop- ment. Her Union Station, once the ranking station of the United States, is still classed with the important terminals. SHIRLEY MATTICK Twenl y

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I' I . nl. Courtesy of W H sto ca! Sor My RIVER TRANSPORTATION OF ST. LOUIS I N THE early fall of l787, a youth rode down to the river bank, opposite St. Louis. As was the custom at crossings when the stream could not be forded, he shouted the long-drawn out, O-o-o-ver! He aited for some sign of activity at the foot of the rocky bluff on the other side. Five minutes passed and again came the lusty halloo, O-o-o- ver! An hour or more passed before a flat-bottomed boat rowed by two men put out. By this haphazard means the traveler from the east side reached St. Louis in that year. By l797, a ferry had been started by Captain James Piggott, prompted by the increasing travel to St. Louis. By 1817, the town had attained the degree of importance which demanded two ferry landings. The service, under competition, became regular, it continued to be primitive. Two kinds of boats were used: the slow-moving, flat-bottomed craft, without covering, was employed to convey horses and wagons, a keel boat with four oars made quicker passage for people. Ferry transportation at St. Louis became pro- gressive when John Day built a boat with a wheel which was turned by a horse in a treadmill. ln those days, when rivalry did not lead to cut rates, the tolls were twenty-five cents for human beings, fifty cents for cattle or horses: twelve and one-half cents a hundred for lumber or other heavy freight. With l8l8 came a new era in ferrying. Samuel Wiggins connected himself with the ferry business, and gradually he consolidated and improved the service. The Wiggins Ferry became an institution of the city, for it met public needs. ln ISI 7, the first steamboat, a very primitive affair, reached St. Louis. Yet when Missouri entered the Union there was not a steamboat owned in the state, although this improvement in transportation was in use on the Ohio and the lower Mississippi. Above St. Louis the navigation was by barges. Steamboats came up to St. Louis, unloaded, loaded, and left. The business men of the city were slow to go into steamboating as a business, and actually as late as IS33, not more than two or three boats were owned in St. Louis. ln I83l, the repairing of steamboats became an important industry at St. Louis. Ten years later a great deal was said about building St. Louis Twenty-one