Rivers were America’s first
transportation highways and the Mississippi River was one of its major
arteries. Long before the towboats and barges one sees on the river today
the river was in use moving goods. French settlers in the region south of
St. Louis would ship their annual harvest south to New Orleans as did fur
trappers and traders of the era. The barge era began with the coming of the
steamboats in the mid 19th century.
A barge is a
flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy
goods. Originally they were used in the canal systems of the eastern United
States and the word “tow” comes from the use of a draft animal walking
along the bank of the canal towing the barge. Beginning in the 1840s
non-scheduled steamboats often pushed one or more barges to increase cargo
capacity. By the 1850s experienced river men found that lashing barges
together and pushing them provided more control and allowed more barges to
be moved at once.
The practice of pushing
barges favored sternwheel propelled boats over sidewheelers and promoted
other improvements as well. As a result towboats became a distinct type of
boat by 1860. Combustion engines were first used about 1910 but did not
become commonplace until the late 1930s, when diesel-powered propeller boats
appeared. Today’s towboats range in size from about 117 feet long by 30
feet wide to more than 200 feet long and 45 feet wide and have diesel
engines that can produce up to 10,000 horsepower. North of St. Louis on the
Upper Mississippi River towboats are usually 3,000 to 5,000 horsepower. As
the river becomes deeper and wider below St. Louis the boats are larger
because they are allowed to push more barges.
typical barge carries 1500 tons of cargo, which is 15 times greater than a
rail car and 60 times greater than one trailer truck. An average river tow
on the Upper Mississippi River is 15 barges consisting of 5 barges tied
together and moving 3 abreast. The same load would require a train 3 miles
long or line of trucks stretching more than 35 miles. In 1995, 321 million
tons of cargos were moved on the Mississippi River. Barges carry many
different types of goods with coal, petro-chemical products, and grain
constituting most common commodities moved.
Visitors to the Middle Mississippi River Valley
can get a close look at these towboats and their barges at the regions locks
and dams or at the city of Grafton’s annual Great
Rivers Towboat Festival in July.