Yellowstone

The steamboat Yellowstone (sometimes Yellow Stone) was a side wheeler steamboat built in Louisville, Kentucky, for the American Fur Company for service on the Missouri River. By design, the Yellowstone was the first powered boat to reach above Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the Missouri River achieving, on her maiden voyage, Fort Tecumseh, South Dakota, on June 19, 1831. The Yellowstone also played an important role in the Texas Revolution of 1836, crossing the Texas Army under Sam Houston over the swollen Brazos River ahead of Santa Anna's pursuing Mexican Army. Early career on the Missouri River The Yellowstone was built between 1830 and 1831 in Louisville, Kentucky, for the American Fur Company to service the fur trade between Saint Louis, Missouri, and the trading camps along the Missouri River up to the mouth of the Yellowstone River in western North Dakota in support of their Montana fur trade. Prior to the Yellowstone, fur traders beyond Council Bluff relied on un-powered keelboats which had to be dragged up-river for supply and then floated downstream with their furs. Beginning in St. Louis, The Yellowstone made her maiden voyage on April 16, 1831, and reached Pierre, South Dakota, on June 19, 1831, six hundred miles farther than any other steamboat, dramatically opening the way for regular travel and trade along the upper stretches of the Missouri River. She returned, fully loaded, to Saint Louis on July 15, 1831. The following year, 1832, the Yellowstone reached the mouth of the river for which she was named. That voyage was chronicled by George Catlin. In 1833, German naturalist Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, together with Swiss artist Karl Bodmer traveled the Missouri River on board the Yellowstone. That journey was also chronicled in Maximilian's Reise in das Innere Nord-Amerikas. Karl Bodmer's depiction of the Yellowstone struggling over a sand bar may be the most accurate depiction of the steamboat in existence.