32¢ Far West
Issue Date: August 22, 1996
City: Orlando, FL
Printed By: Avery Dennison
Printing Method: Photogravure
Perforations: 11 x11.1
The steamboats that navigated the treacherously shallow Missouri River were lovingly called mountain boats. Their hulls were narrow as well as shallow and their single paddlewheel was located in the back. Rivermen said their boats could travel across a meadow on a heavy dew, and that in low water the captain could travel for miles on the foam from an opened keg of beer.
The first steamboat ventured onto the Missouri in 1819, but for the longest time the only boat traffic on the river’s upper reaches was limited to hunters, trappers, and the U.S. Army. For this was the land of the Sioux, Crow, and other such tribes who did everything they could to keep the white man out. All too frequently, stern-wheelers had to battle Indians who fired at them from the banks, only to have to battle them again around the bend. Consequently, rifles were kept close at hand and iron plating on pilothouses was standard equipment.
By 1860, traveling the Missouri was almost routine, with boats steaming to Fort Benton in Montana, 2200 miles upriver. Though the Far West was launched in 1870, her claim to fame is that she carried the news and the 52 survivors of Custer’s massacre at Little Bighorn to the rest of the world. In 1883, the Far West hit a snag and sank seven miles from St. Charles, Missouri.