Here is Part 2 of the series.
While this has nothing to do with the story, I noticed Hoag never uses an exclamation point. If ever a story could justify an exclamation point now and then, this is it!!
Jack asked me to remind you that most of the photos are ones I have dug up and added...you can tell the official ones by the descriptions which are usually small and blurry and part of the photo itself. I usually caption my added ones in reddish type, plus I use a lot of old postcards.
Fort Benton has two newspapers, a daily and a weekly. Both of them got several columns of front page copy out of the transcontinental cruise. While we received every hospitality, much courtesy, and every cooperation from the town's people two big surprises awaited us at the river bank just as we were about ready to shove off. A kindly-faced, middle aged woman elbowed her way through the crowd carrying a huge bundle. She handed the bundle aboard Transcontinental with her compliments. We opened it - an, there was a monstrous ham, roasted to a turn, and adorned with cloves - a gift that we accepted with thanks and alacrity.
Another woman came forward with a second bundle. I contained a chocolate cake about two feet long, a foot and a half wide, and about eight inches thick. But for these we would have been sorely pressed for food during the days and unexpected events that were to follow.
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Smalley's Magazine -1889, but too cool not to use |
With exception of some of the arid portions of the southwest, the eastern two thirds of Montana is as about as complete a wilderness as can be found within the continental limits of the United States. From Fort Benton to Wolf Point, Montana, in a distance of about 400 miles by way of the Missouri River there is not a town, telegraph station, grocery store, gasoline station, or the slightest vestige of civilization other than a few isolated ranches. While negotiating this stretch we realized that we were to be entirely upon our own resources. If we lost our boat we would be 60 miles from the nearest railroad or telegraph station, and just as far from groceries or a gas station, if we happened to run out of the essential commodities.
After carefully computing the distance and the time it would take us to run from Fort Benton to Wolf Point we decided that a week's supply of food, and 25 gallons of fuel would see us through to the next base where supplies could be purchased. Running out of food was not such a serious consideration as the thought of running out of gasoline. We had firearms and fishing tackle, so there was very little danger of facing starvation no matter what mishap might befall us.
The gasoline problem, however, was far more serious. Although we were traveling downstream, floating down without power was not a pleasant thing to contemplate, for in a river that is as crooked as a Scotchman's walking stick, full of snags, rocks, sandbars and debris; one would certainly not get very far in a boat to heavy too be rowed. Even if disaster could be avoided, the wind or the shifting of the river current would set the boat into one bank or the other to cause danger, constant trouble and delay. After much careful thought, I decided to load aboard an extra five gallons of gasoline as a margin of safety. It seemed preferable to go out of Fort Benton with the boat slightly overloaded than to take a chance on running out of motor fuel. Just how well advised was this move was forms a later paragraph of this story. Before we got to Wolf Point we had run out of about everything except baked ham and gasoline.
A sudden deluge of rain, which continued throughout the morning and well into the afternoon, delayed our start down the Missouri until about three o'clock on the afternoon of June the 13th. Then, with the boat powered with only one motor, and most of Fort Benton waving at us from the river bank, we shoved off into the river. LEWIS, the motor we decided to use the first day popped off on both barrels with the first haul on the starter cord. We swung around in the current which was running about ten miles per hour in front of the town, and began going downstream at a speed which forecast our arrival in St. Louis in about two weeks.
Carried along on the current, and with the boat speed on top of that, Fort Benton slid out of sight around a bend in the river in almost less time than it takes to tell it. After our slow and tedious battling up the Columbia, going down the upper Missouri seemed like cruising down a mill race. The low hills of the Montana bad lands slid by with startling rapidity, and we sped into the numerous curves of the river so fast that it was often difficult to correct the boat's course in time to keep her from nosing into the bank on the outside of the curve. Persons who are familiar with the Missouri River at Omaha, Kansas City, or points nearer its confluence with the Mississippi should bear in mind that it is a very different sort of a stream in western Montana.
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| Montana bad lands... |
After some 224 odd miles of speeding down the Missouri from Fort Benton, which we reeled off between the bad lands in about an hour and a half, we checked our position on the map by passing the mouth of the Marias River - a sizable stream which rises in Glacier National Park, and explored by Lewis and Clark who mistook it for the main Missouri.
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| Marias River - Pacific Railroad Surveys (1853–1855) |
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| U.S. Geological Survey |
Just about the time we began to congratulate ourselves upon the splendid time we were making, Transcontinental grated onto a sand bar. She swung around broadside to the current, tipped dangerously, made several several spasmodic jump sideways, and then came to a dead stop with the current boiling and swirling around her, and water leaping over her starboard gunwale now high in the air on the upstream side.
I had shut down the motor at about the same instant the propeller shaft tipped up and went out of the water. There was, however, little time to be wasted if we were to keep the boat from swamping. Mr. Woodbury piled overboard without even stopping to remove his shoes or trousers. Rid of his more than 200 pounds of avoirdupois, the bow rose enough to permit the boat swinging its nose downstream. Then the water began coming over the stern. Wilton was the next man over the side. I followed him into the river, and with the craft lightened by his 180 and my 150, the hull began bumping and scraping over the top of the bar. We walked along holding to the boat until Woodbury suddenly went down to his shoulders and made a frantic scramble getting aboard. Wilton and I climbed over the stern as we floated clear into deep water. After that we did ten miles downstream until the next sandbar sent all hands overboard again. Two more sandbars took another hour and a half off our schedule.
It began to rain again, and the twilight of the evening was dropping down around us when we espied an abandoned log cabin which looked like a pretty good place to hang up for the night. The cabin was well built and well furnished, but it smelled mousey and the thick layer of dust gave mute evidence to its being a long time in disuse. We swept the place out, built a fire in the stove, and soon had everything quite comfortable and homelike. Meanwhile the rain poured down outside, lightening flashed, and thunder roared. We were glad to have a roof over our heads and a dry floor underfoot.
A drizzle of rain was still coming down next morning, but there were a few encouraging blue spots in the sky. So, we stowed our gear aboard the boat and shoved off down the river. Along this portion of the Missouri, checking one's position on the map is very difficult. Accurate maps of the region do not exist. The only available charts of the river are those made from the government survey of 1889. Any charts of the Missouri would be obsolete before they could get off the printing press because of the river's propensity for cutting into its own banks almost over night. Obviously such charts are of no value whatsoever as an aid to navigation, and of very little value even for determining one's approximate position on the map of the state.
On the chart of 1889 we frequently found that the river was as much as five miles away from the locations where the charts showed it to have been when the surveys were made. The only places where the charts were really worth anything, were where the river flows through rocky canyons and through rocky banks as it does through many parts of Montana. In those places the river stays put and gives the charts a semblance of reliability regarding the banks at least - if not the bottom. In the 400 mile stretch of river between Fort Benton and Wolf Point we were able to determine our location only by identification of the various rapids, from passing the mouths of tributary rivers, and an estimate of the mileage traveled. The rapids, of course, are the hard bank portions of the stream. Therefore they tallied with the charts of 1889.
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| Photo from The River and I by John Gneisenau Neihardt - 1905 |
The rapids of the upper Missouri below Fort Benton are by no means comparable to the rapids of the Columbia, the Missouri above Fort Benton, or such rapids of the St. Lawrence, or those of the Grand Canyon of Arizona. They are minor rapids, evidently very old in geological history and worn down by the water flow of ages until most of the sting has been pulled out of them. Usually they are nothing more than an easy pitch of swift water, a few swells, and then down into gently flowing river again. They seemed rather tame to us after some of the buffeting we'd received in the flooded Columbia, but were not entirely without a thrill. There was always the exhilaration of speed, the sweep of the river down watery slopes, and same fancy maneuvering to avoid rocks - either real or imaginary.
While these rapids have nothing that even an amateur boatman need fear, they must of constituted an almost insurmountable obstacle to the early steamboat navigation of the upper river. It is obvious that no stern wheeled steamer ever built could have ascended against the current under its own power. They pulled themselves up by taking steel cables ashore, tying onto any solid fastening that might be available, and then winding up the cables with their deck winches. It must have been a slow and tedious business.
The first rapids was the Black Bluff Rapids just 20 miles below Fort Benton and a few miles north of the Marias River. It looked somewhat formidable, but we were into it before there was any chance to think about stopping to survey it before we attempted a descent. There was no stopping or turning back in the current we were in, so we gritted our teeth, headed for the deepest looking water chute between the rocks, and plunged ahead. Down we went in a series of tossing dips. We shot between some ominous looking rocks, bumped over a few swells, and then went into the almost right angle bend of the river at the foot of the rapid. The whole river was piling into the wall at the curve, and Transcontinental was heading for the bank as if bent on tearing out that portion of the state of Montana. But, thanks to the efficacy of propellor steering, the motor kicked the stern of the boat around, and we got headed downstream. The shores flew by with startling rapidity, and in another minute we were put-putting placidly down the middle of the river again.
Pablos Rapid was reached and run about eleven o'clock on the morning of our second day down the Missouri. It was only a gentle riffle, a mile or more of swift, sloping water, a few swells, and then down to calm river. Fifteen miles below Pablos Rapid we came to the head of Drowned Man's Rapids, named by Lewis and Clark from the occasion of finding a drowned Indian in them. Drowned Man Rapids looked decidedly dangerous from above. A mill race current foamed, heaved, and showed breakers that indicated submerged rocks among the generous sprinkling of boulders that protruded above the surface. Throttling the motor slightly, we headed down the largest water chute, taking soundings with the pike pole as we went. The ten-foot pike pole failed to touch anywhere, and we went down the first chute without hitting anything. A series of riffling pools interspersed with a dozen long, sloping chutes, and we were down Drowned Man's Rapids without the loss of so much as a flake of paint.
At noon we checked our position by passing the mouth of the Judith River. We'd knocked 88 miles off the 2284 miles from Fort Benton to the Mississippi in less than six hours of actual cruising.
We lunched on baked ham, bread, chocolate cake, and a vacuum bottle coffee while cruising down the river.
Later in the afternoon we shot down a long series of rapids Gallatin Rapids, Dauphin Rapids, Lone Pine Rapids, Castle Bluff Rapids, Bird Rapids, and a string of miscellaneous riffles unnamed on the charts. We got down the whole list of rapids without the slightest mishap. They merely added a few thrill to the day's cruising and added miles to our schedule.
About four o'clock that afternoon it began raining again. We began to look for a place where we could tie up and camp, but were in a portion of the river where there was nothing but cut banks - and, a cut bank is no place to tie up a boat.
The writer learned that many years ago from a canoeing experience on the Missouri River.
Persons who know ordinary, well behaved rivers can have no conception of what a mean, cantankerous, treacherous stream the Missouri is, short of actual experience. It has a pernicious habit of rambling around all over the landscape. It tears out its banks, swallows a farm, and forests, undermines bridges and other man-made structures, oftentimes literally an acre at a bite. It commits these depredations with startling rapidity. Land values along the Missouri are precarious indeed. A man might plant a hundred acres of corn or other crops on land adjoining the river, but he has no assurance whatever that he'll harvest the crop. If good luck is with him he'll harvest it, but if the river begins cutting into his land then the river will swallow his land, the crop, and even the farmer's house and barns unless he picks up the whole outfit and moves.
Thus, a cut bank is precisely what the name indicates it's a place where the river is cutting into its banks. There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of miles of cut banks along the Missouri from Fort Benton to the Mississippi.
A cut bank may be two feet high, or twenty feet high depending on where the river decides to do its cutting. When the current shifts, as it may do over night, and begins cutting into a bank the earth at the water level is quickly undermined. The undermining proceeds just so far then down comes a section of the bank into the river.
The writer has seen tens of thousands of tons of earth fall into the river in one grand splash. I've seen single trees, and sometimes half a forest plunge into the consuming maw of the river and disappear just as a trout swallows a fly. Sometimes these cut banks extend along the banks for many miles. If a boat ties up against a cut bank, or cruises near one, a thousand tons of earth might crash down on top of it any instant. Hence, the most amateur Missouri River boatman soon learns to give the cut banks a wide and comfortable berth. During our cruise down the Missouri we frequently found it necessary to run down the banks for miles in order to find a place to tie up without endangering our lives under cut banks.
Our second day on the river out of Fort Benton served to illustrate this point when we found it necessary to run down the river for ten miles looking for a camping place before we found one where the bank was of such a nature that we dared to land.
On the evening of our third day down the Missouri, after the daily dousing of rain that we failed to miss during a single day's cruising in Montana, we camped at the mouth of the Musselshell River. There after a hearty dinner with husky appetites worked up during the day by reason of getting the boat off of no less than half a dozen sandbars, we decided to see what was on the air in the world of radio. Our receiving set, a Gilfillan four-tube Neutrodyne, was set up. We strung an aerial from a tree, threw a wire into the river for a ground, and I began tuning in to find out what was on the air. Five minutes of persistent effort failed to get so much as a squawk or squeal out of the loud speaker. The cameraman tried it, but try as he would - to put it in his own words, there was "No sound from nowhere."
I dug inside the box and found a loose nut and a detached wire. I replaced the wire where it seemed it should to go, and the loose nut fitted the binding post. We tried it again, and almost instantly a big bass voice roared out in the loud speaker - "Nine o'clock and all is well." The voice came from Portland, Oregon, but from what station we never learned. With a little more tuning we received the news reports, concerts, dance music and discourses form San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and Omaha. A two minute effort at tuning brought in the familiar voice of Uncle John from station KHJ with his beautiful Castilian pronunciation of the name of our home town"Loce Ang-hay-lais California." We were out in the Styx and the badlands of Montana, nearly 2000 miles from the homes we left on May 13 yet within the sound of the voice of an old friend and familiar figure of our own community. Throughout the trip the radio provided many a pleasant evening around the camp. It kept us informed of world events when we were many miles from nowhere, and usually long before we had opportunity to receive news through the medium of the press. It did much to relieve monotony and dispel nostalgia, that ailment which has broken the backbone of many a well organized expedition into the out of the way places of the earth.
Instead of making the cruise of 400 miles from Fort Benton to Wolf Point in about four days as we had hoped to do, the trip required nine days. Sand bars, shallow water, rain every day, and one near tornado, slowed down our schedule. On top of that we encountered a brand new form of difficulty, wholly unexpected, but which very nearly put a quietus upon our attempt to navigate down the 2284 miles of the Missouri River. That difficulty was nothing other than the increasing quantity of the silt which the water begins to accumulate about 200 miles below Fort Benton.
The fact that the Missouri River caused us an unending round of mechanical grief is no reflection upon the manufacturers of the motors we were using.
Everyone knows the the effect of fine sand and other abrasives applied to the frictional parts of moving machinery. If we sprinkle sand into moving machinery, that machinery is doomed to quick destruction, and that is precisely what the Missouri River silt did to the underwater parts of our motors.
The water of the Missouri carries approximately one per cent of fine silt, and that is why no screw propelled boat has yet been devised to operate successfully in that stream. The only kind of power boat that will stand up in the Missouri is what the natives along the stream call "a wet stern boat" - in other works, a stern wheeler, a type of craft in which all wearing parts are entirely separated from the abrasive water.
The first intimation we had of this trouble was near the mouth of the Mussellshell River when a water pump went out of business. I removed the pump in an effort to locate the trouble, and came to the sickening realization of the problem we faced when I dissected the pump. The plunger was ground down completely out of shape. The coil spring was flattened out like a clock spring where it came in moving contact with the pump cylinder wall, and the pump cam looked as if it had been ground on an emery wheel. The silt was doing its mischief as effectively as emery dust would have done. I put in a new pump, and six hours later the motor was ready for another one. When we saw what was happening to the pumps no imagination was needed to visualize what was to be the fate of shaft bearings, gears, thrust bearings, and every other moving part below the water line.
We had started down the Missouri with six spare water pumps, but long before we got to Wolf Point the last one had been ground out past hope of redemption. We came down the last hundred miles of river to Wolf Point with one motor running by means of what we termed an "Armstrong & Bailey Water Pump". The Armstrong & Bailey Pump was a combination of a tin dipper, a five gallon gasoline can with a hole cut in the bottom, and a length of rubber tubing by which we bailed the water out of the river with the dipper, strong-armed it into the gasoline tin, and let gravity carry it through the motor. This makeshift contraption was a last resort when the last spare water pump went out. It worked successfully, but keeping the can filled and the water flowing was something of a dog-in-a-tread-mill job.
Long before our last water pump went out the motor had begun to grumble, groan and vibrate. It was only a question of time before every underwater part would be consumed by the silt. We'd begun to wonder if we would ever see Wolf Point short of floating down the river on the current, trying to keep the boat off the shore with oars. Poor old LEWIS, the motor that had driven us all the way from Fort Benton, was creaking and rattling in every underwater joint. CLARK had been kept in reserve. We ran out of food - everything but baked ham, which by that time had begun to get a bit musty. When our supply of grease ran out, I filled the motor gear housing with the last half pound of butter. Subsequent fillings before reaching Wolf Point were made with lard. Our supply of gasoline was also running low. Within 50 miles of Wolf Point it was doubtful if we had gas enough to make the run. As it was, we got under the wire with half a gallon to spare. Without the extra five gallons loaded at Fort Benton for a precaution, we'd have been just four and half gallons short.
Landing at Wolf Point at ten o'clock at night after several nightmare hours of cruising in total darkness, we found most of the town at the the river bank to meet us.
There is a big S-shaped curve in the river just above Wolf Point, and the sharp barking of our motor on the still night air was heard in the town while we were coming down the top loop of the S. The cry went through the town - "They're coming." Every available automobile was loaded and headed for the river. Stepping ashore at the ferry landing, and under the glare of the headlights of automobiles, we were promptly taken in tow by Charles Gordon, Secretary of the Wold Point Chamber of Commerce, and a delegation of citizens.
We were half starved, hence thoroughly appreciative of the town's hospitality. We were whisked to a hotel by automobile, installed in rooms with baths, and half an hour later were arrayed around the banquet tables. The whole town of something like 2500 inhabitants was literally turned over to us. It is doubtful if Lewis and Clark themselves ever received any greater ovation upon their return to St. Louis.
While the citizens of Wolf Point sought to entertain us with a coyote hunt, automobile trips into the surrounding country, and about everything else imaginable; we were compelled to forego much of the proferred hospitality. Getting down the Missouri River was far more important to us. We hauled the LEWIS motor to a garage, got back in the shop, and pulled the entire underwater mechanism to pieces. It was wrecked by the silt beyond all description short of a mechanical thesis. That motor was DONE. Our only hope of avoiding a long delay seemed to hinge upon getting down the river 170 miles to Williston, North Dakota, with the reserve motor, and picking up a supply of spare parts upon a telegraphic order to the factory. So, the factory got a two hundred word telegram in which our troubles were explained, and in which we outlined that our only hope of ever getting to the Mississippi River was to be able to replace the underwater parts as fast as the silt consumed them. That meant no less than twenty-five spares of every part below the water line.
The next three days were days of discouragement and near despair. In spite of the fact it rained every day, the Missouri River got lower hour by hour. I never saw a country where it could rain so much from so few clouds as in eastern Montana and North Dakota. We were frequently wet to the skin with clear skies all around us - a perfect deluge descending from a cloud apparently no bigger than a man's hat. Where all the rain went that seemed to be falling in the country was a mystery, but it certainly didn't come down the Missouri.
For fifty miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone River we found it necessary to pike-pole our way down the Missouri with the motor running at about quarter speed, trying to find enough water to float Transcontinental. We hung up on sandbars until we got tired of logging them and the number of hours of delay they caused us. Notwithstanding this was the condition we encountered during the season of high water, and the river is strewn with a forest of snags - whole trees sticking up out of the water - the Missouri is still considered a NAVIGABLE STREAM, clear through to Fort Benton.
There is a bridge across the river at Fort Benton. It has no draw because it is above the theoretical head of navigation.
This bit of screen capture video goes from Wolf Point to the mouth of the Yellowstone.
The next bridge is the Mondak, 519 miles below Fort Benton, at the state boundary between Montana and North Dakota. The latter bridge, owned by the Great Northern Railroad, has a lift span. The bridge tender holds his job because the government made it for him. The last boat he'd seen on the river was six years ago when the Government snag boat Mandan came up pulling a snag or two out of the river about every forty miles.
Eight miles below the Mondak bridge, and into North Dakota, we came to the mouth of the Yellowstone River - a tawny, yellow tiger that was roaring into the Missouri with a tremendous flood. The Yellowstone actually had the Missouri backed up several miles above its mouth, and in addition to the torrent of liquid silt, spewed forth into the Missouri a most variegated assortment of logs, whole trees, driftwood and debris. We climbed on top of the Yellowstone deluge and almost immediately began going downstream at a speed we had not known for days. It was a different sort of river after we picked up the Yellowstone - or as I believe it could be more appropriately said: after the Missouri flowed into the Yellowstone.
The CLARK motor was much the worse for silt damage and was running with the Armstrong & Bailey Pump, but still kicking when we arrived in Williston near sundown.
Williston looked more like a city to us than anything we had seen since leaving Portland, Oregon.
No sooner than we were on shore than we were picked up by William Davidson, president of the local bank, and a committee of citizens who had been watching the river for us for days.
We were among friends immediately, and the story of our entertainment there would constitute enough material for a book.
All down the Missouri from about Williston, North Dakota, to the Mississippi, we found boats that were powered with about every make of outboard motor on the market. Without exception they were having the same grief that the silt was causing us, and all of them had abandoned attempts to use water pumps. We also found many boats with inboard power plants and screw driven. The owners of these boats told us they were having endless troubles with stuffing boxes, shaft bearings, and water pumps. They were experimenting with numerous mechanical dodges in an effort to overcome silt troubles. The only ones who had really made a success of it were the fellows who had discarded screw propulsion altogether, and converted their boats into stern wheelers. We found any number of boats from fifteen foot flat bottomed skiffs up to fifty footers, powered with old automobile engines, and paddle wheel driven. Most of these boat owners were using automobile radiator system of motor cooling, or were cooling their motors by pumping from a tank of clear water carried in the craft.
The first rapids was the Black Bluff Rapids just 20 miles below Fort Benton and a few miles north of the Marias River. It looked somewhat formidable, but we were into it before there was any chance to think about stopping to survey it before we attempted a descent. There was no stopping or turning back in the current we were in, so we gritted our teeth, headed for the deepest looking water chute between the rocks, and plunged ahead. Down we went in a series of tossing dips. We shot between some ominous looking rocks, bumped over a few swells, and then went into the almost right angle bend of the river at the foot of the rapid. The whole river was piling into the wall at the curve, and Transcontinental was heading for the bank as if bent on tearing out that portion of the state of Montana. But, thanks to the efficacy of propellor steering, the motor kicked the stern of the boat around, and we got headed downstream. The shores flew by with startling rapidity, and in another minute we were put-putting placidly down the middle of the river again.
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United States Congressional serial set, Issue 6116 |
At noon we checked our position by passing the mouth of the Judith River. We'd knocked 88 miles off the 2284 miles from Fort Benton to the Mississippi in less than six hours of actual cruising.
We lunched on baked ham, bread, chocolate cake, and a vacuum bottle coffee while cruising down the river.
Later in the afternoon we shot down a long series of rapids Gallatin Rapids, Dauphin Rapids, Lone Pine Rapids, Castle Bluff Rapids, Bird Rapids, and a string of miscellaneous riffles unnamed on the charts. We got down the whole list of rapids without the slightest mishap. They merely added a few thrill to the day's cruising and added miles to our schedule.
About four o'clock that afternoon it began raining again. We began to look for a place where we could tie up and camp, but were in a portion of the river where there was nothing but cut banks - and, a cut bank is no place to tie up a boat.
The writer learned that many years ago from a canoeing experience on the Missouri River.
Persons who know ordinary, well behaved rivers can have no conception of what a mean, cantankerous, treacherous stream the Missouri is, short of actual experience. It has a pernicious habit of rambling around all over the landscape. It tears out its banks, swallows a farm, and forests, undermines bridges and other man-made structures, oftentimes literally an acre at a bite. It commits these depredations with startling rapidity. Land values along the Missouri are precarious indeed. A man might plant a hundred acres of corn or other crops on land adjoining the river, but he has no assurance whatever that he'll harvest the crop. If good luck is with him he'll harvest it, but if the river begins cutting into his land then the river will swallow his land, the crop, and even the farmer's house and barns unless he picks up the whole outfit and moves.
Thus, a cut bank is precisely what the name indicates it's a place where the river is cutting into its banks. There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of miles of cut banks along the Missouri from Fort Benton to the Mississippi.
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| cut banks in the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument |
The writer has seen tens of thousands of tons of earth fall into the river in one grand splash. I've seen single trees, and sometimes half a forest plunge into the consuming maw of the river and disappear just as a trout swallows a fly. Sometimes these cut banks extend along the banks for many miles. If a boat ties up against a cut bank, or cruises near one, a thousand tons of earth might crash down on top of it any instant. Hence, the most amateur Missouri River boatman soon learns to give the cut banks a wide and comfortable berth. During our cruise down the Missouri we frequently found it necessary to run down the banks for miles in order to find a place to tie up without endangering our lives under cut banks.
Our second day on the river out of Fort Benton served to illustrate this point when we found it necessary to run down the river for ten miles looking for a camping place before we found one where the bank was of such a nature that we dared to land.
On the evening of our third day down the Missouri, after the daily dousing of rain that we failed to miss during a single day's cruising in Montana, we camped at the mouth of the Musselshell River. There after a hearty dinner with husky appetites worked up during the day by reason of getting the boat off of no less than half a dozen sandbars, we decided to see what was on the air in the world of radio. Our receiving set, a Gilfillan four-tube Neutrodyne, was set up. We strung an aerial from a tree, threw a wire into the river for a ground, and I began tuning in to find out what was on the air. Five minutes of persistent effort failed to get so much as a squawk or squeal out of the loud speaker. The cameraman tried it, but try as he would - to put it in his own words, there was "No sound from nowhere."
I dug inside the box and found a loose nut and a detached wire. I replaced the wire where it seemed it should to go, and the loose nut fitted the binding post. We tried it again, and almost instantly a big bass voice roared out in the loud speaker - "Nine o'clock and all is well." The voice came from Portland, Oregon, but from what station we never learned. With a little more tuning we received the news reports, concerts, dance music and discourses form San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and Omaha. A two minute effort at tuning brought in the familiar voice of Uncle John from station KHJ with his beautiful Castilian pronunciation of the name of our home town"Loce Ang-hay-lais California." We were out in the Styx and the badlands of Montana, nearly 2000 miles from the homes we left on May 13 yet within the sound of the voice of an old friend and familiar figure of our own community. Throughout the trip the radio provided many a pleasant evening around the camp. It kept us informed of world events when we were many miles from nowhere, and usually long before we had opportunity to receive news through the medium of the press. It did much to relieve monotony and dispel nostalgia, that ailment which has broken the backbone of many a well organized expedition into the out of the way places of the earth.
Instead of making the cruise of 400 miles from Fort Benton to Wolf Point in about four days as we had hoped to do, the trip required nine days. Sand bars, shallow water, rain every day, and one near tornado, slowed down our schedule. On top of that we encountered a brand new form of difficulty, wholly unexpected, but which very nearly put a quietus upon our attempt to navigate down the 2284 miles of the Missouri River. That difficulty was nothing other than the increasing quantity of the silt which the water begins to accumulate about 200 miles below Fort Benton.
The fact that the Missouri River caused us an unending round of mechanical grief is no reflection upon the manufacturers of the motors we were using. Everyone knows the the effect of fine sand and other abrasives applied to the frictional parts of moving machinery. If we sprinkle sand into moving machinery, that machinery is doomed to quick destruction, and that is precisely what the Missouri River silt did to the underwater parts of our motors.
The water of the Missouri carries approximately one per cent of fine silt, and that is why no screw propelled boat has yet been devised to operate successfully in that stream. The only kind of power boat that will stand up in the Missouri is what the natives along the stream call "a wet stern boat" - in other works, a stern wheeler, a type of craft in which all wearing parts are entirely separated from the abrasive water.
The first intimation we had of this trouble was near the mouth of the Mussellshell River when a water pump went out of business. I removed the pump in an effort to locate the trouble, and came to the sickening realization of the problem we faced when I dissected the pump. The plunger was ground down completely out of shape. The coil spring was flattened out like a clock spring where it came in moving contact with the pump cylinder wall, and the pump cam looked as if it had been ground on an emery wheel. The silt was doing its mischief as effectively as emery dust would have done. I put in a new pump, and six hours later the motor was ready for another one. When we saw what was happening to the pumps no imagination was needed to visualize what was to be the fate of shaft bearings, gears, thrust bearings, and every other moving part below the water line.
We had started down the Missouri with six spare water pumps, but long before we got to Wolf Point the last one had been ground out past hope of redemption. We came down the last hundred miles of river to Wolf Point with one motor running by means of what we termed an "Armstrong & Bailey Water Pump". The Armstrong & Bailey Pump was a combination of a tin dipper, a five gallon gasoline can with a hole cut in the bottom, and a length of rubber tubing by which we bailed the water out of the river with the dipper, strong-armed it into the gasoline tin, and let gravity carry it through the motor. This makeshift contraption was a last resort when the last spare water pump went out. It worked successfully, but keeping the can filled and the water flowing was something of a dog-in-a-tread-mill job.
Long before our last water pump went out the motor had begun to grumble, groan and vibrate. It was only a question of time before every underwater part would be consumed by the silt. We'd begun to wonder if we would ever see Wolf Point short of floating down the river on the current, trying to keep the boat off the shore with oars. Poor old LEWIS, the motor that had driven us all the way from Fort Benton, was creaking and rattling in every underwater joint. CLARK had been kept in reserve. We ran out of food - everything but baked ham, which by that time had begun to get a bit musty. When our supply of grease ran out, I filled the motor gear housing with the last half pound of butter. Subsequent fillings before reaching Wolf Point were made with lard. Our supply of gasoline was also running low. Within 50 miles of Wolf Point it was doubtful if we had gas enough to make the run. As it was, we got under the wire with half a gallon to spare. Without the extra five gallons loaded at Fort Benton for a precaution, we'd have been just four and half gallons short.
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| 1910 |
There is a big S-shaped curve in the river just above Wolf Point, and the sharp barking of our motor on the still night air was heard in the town while we were coming down the top loop of the S. The cry went through the town - "They're coming." Every available automobile was loaded and headed for the river. Stepping ashore at the ferry landing, and under the glare of the headlights of automobiles, we were promptly taken in tow by Charles Gordon, Secretary of the Wold Point Chamber of Commerce, and a delegation of citizens.
We were half starved, hence thoroughly appreciative of the town's hospitality. We were whisked to a hotel by automobile, installed in rooms with baths, and half an hour later were arrayed around the banquet tables. The whole town of something like 2500 inhabitants was literally turned over to us. It is doubtful if Lewis and Clark themselves ever received any greater ovation upon their return to St. Louis.
While the citizens of Wolf Point sought to entertain us with a coyote hunt, automobile trips into the surrounding country, and about everything else imaginable; we were compelled to forego much of the proferred hospitality. Getting down the Missouri River was far more important to us. We hauled the LEWIS motor to a garage, got back in the shop, and pulled the entire underwater mechanism to pieces. It was wrecked by the silt beyond all description short of a mechanical thesis. That motor was DONE. Our only hope of avoiding a long delay seemed to hinge upon getting down the river 170 miles to Williston, North Dakota, with the reserve motor, and picking up a supply of spare parts upon a telegraphic order to the factory. So, the factory got a two hundred word telegram in which our troubles were explained, and in which we outlined that our only hope of ever getting to the Mississippi River was to be able to replace the underwater parts as fast as the silt consumed them. That meant no less than twenty-five spares of every part below the water line.
The next three days were days of discouragement and near despair. In spite of the fact it rained every day, the Missouri River got lower hour by hour. I never saw a country where it could rain so much from so few clouds as in eastern Montana and North Dakota. We were frequently wet to the skin with clear skies all around us - a perfect deluge descending from a cloud apparently no bigger than a man's hat. Where all the rain went that seemed to be falling in the country was a mystery, but it certainly didn't come down the Missouri.
For fifty miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone River we found it necessary to pike-pole our way down the Missouri with the motor running at about quarter speed, trying to find enough water to float Transcontinental. We hung up on sandbars until we got tired of logging them and the number of hours of delay they caused us. Notwithstanding this was the condition we encountered during the season of high water, and the river is strewn with a forest of snags - whole trees sticking up out of the water - the Missouri is still considered a NAVIGABLE STREAM, clear through to Fort Benton.
There is a bridge across the river at Fort Benton. It has no draw because it is above the theoretical head of navigation.
This bit of screen capture video goes from Wolf Point to the mouth of the Yellowstone.
The next bridge is the Mondak, 519 miles below Fort Benton, at the state boundary between Montana and North Dakota. The latter bridge, owned by the Great Northern Railroad, has a lift span. The bridge tender holds his job because the government made it for him. The last boat he'd seen on the river was six years ago when the Government snag boat Mandan came up pulling a snag or two out of the river about every forty miles.
Eight miles below the Mondak bridge, and into North Dakota, we came to the mouth of the Yellowstone River - a tawny, yellow tiger that was roaring into the Missouri with a tremendous flood. The Yellowstone actually had the Missouri backed up several miles above its mouth, and in addition to the torrent of liquid silt, spewed forth into the Missouri a most variegated assortment of logs, whole trees, driftwood and debris. We climbed on top of the Yellowstone deluge and almost immediately began going downstream at a speed we had not known for days. It was a different sort of river after we picked up the Yellowstone - or as I believe it could be more appropriately said: after the Missouri flowed into the Yellowstone.
The CLARK motor was much the worse for silt damage and was running with the Armstrong & Bailey Pump, but still kicking when we arrived in Williston near sundown.
Williston looked more like a city to us than anything we had seen since leaving Portland, Oregon.
No sooner than we were on shore than we were picked up by William Davidson, president of the local bank, and a committee of citizens who had been watching the river for us for days. We were among friends immediately, and the story of our entertainment there would constitute enough material for a book.
All these photos are from about 15 years before our heroes arrived in this town.
We spent two days in Williston, and for special benefit of the transcontinental motor boat party the town put on an organized coyote hunt with horses, dogs, cowpunchers, cowgirls, and all the regalia. Of all the wild west shows, and wild horseback riding across the plains, this one in which we took part was the equal of anything ever done in motion picture film. The coyote was captured alive when the dogs cornered him in a stream.
In response to our wire from Wolf Point to the Evinrude Motor Company, we found a huge box of motor parts at the Williston express office. Out of this stock of parts we got both motors in first class condition, and shoved off down the river. The shipment of parts included water pumps, but when we found the Missouri River silt would cut out water pumps at the rate of one every four hours, we went back to the Armstrong & Bailey system of watering the motors. Later we rigged up a tank in the boat which we filled with clear water and connected with the motor to operate as a thermo-syphon system.
Every one of these boat owners with whom we talked told us that attempting to operate any form of screw driven boat in the Missouri was worse than a waste of effort and money. All of them marveled at the fact we seemed to be getting down the river with outboard motor power, and plied us with questions to know how we did it. We had but one answer to these questions. That was - replacing parts as fast as the silt ate them up. After discovering this condition throughout the length of the Missouri, and through one of the richest agricultural districts of the entire United States, it is apparent to the writer that the boat and marine engine manufacturers have overlooked a magnificent opportunity. A properly constructed, shallow draft, paddle driven, gasoline boat would find plenty of buyers in the seven rich states along the Missouri - not to mention along many other streams of the world where a similar silt condition exists.
The outboard motor manufacturer who can build a motor to completely divorce the silty water from the wearing parts would find a ready market for a few hundred such motors every year along the Missouri alone. There is at the moment at least one outboard motor manufacturer who has begun working on the problem. That is the Evinrude Motor Company. After our silt troubles had been thoroughly explained in letters and telegrams, we received a peculiar telegram from the factory one day. The message read: "Please procure large hogshead or metal drum fill same with Missouri River water and ship to us collect desire same for experimental purposes." We promptly bought a hogshead out of a pickle factory, filled it out of the river, and freighted it to Milwaukee.
After leaving Williston we found that about the only way we could keep going was by alternative use of the two motors. We'd run from four to six hours with one motor, and by the time that motor would strip a set of gears or tear out a set of head bearings, we'd have the other one ready for business. By this time Transcontinental had been transformed into something of a floating machine shop. I had purchased every necessary tool, even to a bench vise which was fastened to a rear seat. Mr. Wilton and Mr. Woodbury being somewhat unmechanical gentlemen, the task of keeping the motors turning evolved upon me. Thus, during the six weeks that we cruised down the Missouri my hands became horny and calloused, and I got so I could overhaul the entire underwater mechanism of a motor - do the job jig time, and almost with my eyes shut.
No comfort was added to the cruise down the Missouri when we began running into the torrid climate for which the Middle West is famous - or infamous - during the summer months. During our cruise up the Columbia the weather had been almost uncomfortably cold. We had moderately cool weather down the first 400 miles of the Missouri, but at Wolf Point, Montana, we ran into the first really HOT weather a temperature of 105 degrees. It was hot in Williston, but only 102 degrees, and still hotter in Pierre, South Dakota, Sioux City, Omaha, and Kansas City. In fact, we had the hot weather with us from Wolf Point, Montana to the Mississippi River, and on up the Mississippi River, the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and the Chicago Drainage Canal - or until we rounded the breakwater into Lake Michigan at Chicago.
Sioux City, Iowa, however, broke the temperature records for the entire ocean to ocean cruise with a thermometer standing at 106 degrees and a humidity that wouldn't have dried a wet towel in a week.
Along with the hot weather we also got the mosquitoes - BILLIONS of them. There was never a moment from Williston, North Dakota, and St. Louis that we ever got a moment's relief from their attacks except when cruising down the middle of the river, or under mosquito netting.
When we attempted to make camp we found it necessary to don head nets and heavy gloves before we dared land on the shores. Then it was a case of building a smudge fire completely around the camp, or doing our camping entirely within the protection of mosquito proof tents. As I recall those smudge firs now, I often wonder who suffered more from them - we or the mosquitoes? Moreover, the mosquitoes of the Missouri River valley are by no means nocturnal in their habits, being almost as active in the daytime as at night. The writer has seen life on five continents of this earth, but only in the muskegs of Alaska have I ever known mosquitoes that were worse than the twist-drill songsters of the Missouri River.
The mosquitoes gave Wilton and me many hearty laughs at the expense of Mr. Woodbury. He smokes a pipe eternally, and before getting to the Missouri River Valley maintained that he was so full of nicotine that no mosquito he had ever met would even associate with him. I still have a vision of him fleeing frantically into camp one night in North Dakota - pawing the air like a madman, uttering picturesque language, and trailed by a flock of bloodthirsty insects that resembled a cloud of smoke. In addition to mosquitoes we also had a few wood ticks, and swarms of very annoying gray sand flies that trailed us down the Missouri from Montana to Mississippi. These foes are about twice the size of an ordinary house fly, shaped somewhat like a queen bee, and pale gray in color. They have a bite like the sting of hornet, and are as savage as the latter in their boldness of attack. One never bit us without drawing blood. The only redeeming trait about them is that they bite so savagely, and are so intent upon gratifying their thirst for blood that they are easily killed. These flies, called pilot flies by the natives along the Missouri, by reason of the annoyance they cause boat pilots, seem to hold forth chiefly along the cut banks. We never cruised within a hundred yards of a cut bank without having a swarm of them put out after us. Usually there was no relief from them until the last pilot fly was killed. Then we'd have peace until the next swarm decided to come board.
It would take many issues of Motor Boating devoted exclusively to the story of the first motor boat expedition across North America to recount anything more than the mere highlights of our 2284 mile cruise down the Missouri River. We reached Bismarck, the capitol of North Dakota, on June 26, where the cruise came to a temporary halt while the skipper went to the hospital suffering from a threatened attack of typhoid fever. On July 1 I was able to travel again, although still rather weak and groggy, an under doctor's orders to drink no more unboiled water. Prior to that time we had been drinking the Missouri River - sometimes without even stopping to to sift the sand and mud out of it. In Montana we usually took our drinking water supplies from small clear tributary streams. But, in doing this we got hold of alkali water several times that couldn't even be disguised in tea. The alkali water also had a distressing medicinal effect. We later learned the trick of settling the water around our camps by dusting a little alum into a bucket full of it. Below Bismarck we discontinued drinking river water except after being settled and boiled.
In the states of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, we got rained upon so frequently that a little rain became a mere incident of a day's cruising. There was one storm, however, that overtook us on the afternoon of July 9 below Chamberlain, South Dakota, which was the outstanding humorous weather experience of the entire ocean to ocean cruise. We had been running down the river until four o'clock in the afternoon under a sullen sky that had threatened rain all day. Finally the storm began to blacken and show flashes of lightening. Down came a few spatters of rain. Then the rain came thicker and faster, and accompanied by a deluge of hailstones about the size of peas. We cruised on, but when the hailstones began getting bigger, with the rain and hail coming down so thick and fast that we could scarcely see the shores - we decided to land and make camp immediately.
To get in the mood, view this YouTube South Dakota hail storm video :-)
Fortunately we pulled in on a piece of river bank where landing was easily made and upon a camp site that was as good as if we had selected it. By this time the hailstones were coming down like a shower of marbles, and getting bigger every instant, They assumed the proportion of golf balls, and jagged pieces of ice the size of soda biscuits began to bombard us. In his haste to get ashore, Mr. Woodbury, who hasn't a great deal of hair on top of his head, left the boat without his hat. It was obvious that even the smaller hailstones were causing him discomfort. Working frantically he managed to get his tent set up before the deluge of larger hailstone assailed us. He was adjusting the last cord of the tent when I saw a hailstone about the size of a Bermuda onion smite him on his bald spot and go bouncing off like a rubber ball. I could refrain from laughter no longer as he let out a wail like a hit dog, and dived for the protecting shelter of the tent.
Meanwhile, Wilton and I were dragging duffel ashore attempting to get some semblance of an orderly camp before all our equipment was drenched. Wilton had also come ashore hatless, but having a luxuriant growth of hair, his head was fairly well protected against the hailstones. I had put on a slicker and a sou'west hat before leaving the boat, but presently the hail began stinging my head in spite of heavy hair and hat. I ran to the boat, got a towel, and folded it into the top of my hat as protection against the falling chunks of ice. Then I went to work to set up my own tent.
The hail, which by this time had begun cutting leaves off the trees all around us, was making a frightful din. But even above the racket I heard a noise that sounded like some sort of Indian war dance. Looking about, I was convulsed with laughter as I discovered the source of the noise. It was Wilton, working to set up camp, and running around like a madman with a galvanized iron bucket over his head, and the bail of the bucket for a chin strap to keep from losing it.The hailstones were rattling down on the top of the bucket with a noise that sounded like an orchestra of tom-toms. I'd have given a ten dollar note for a photograph of the rotund cameraman at that instant. But, the picture that was made impossible by the rain would have been incomplete without a phonograph record of the sound made by the hailstones rattling against his improvised weather helmet.
While we had somewhat of a wet camp that night, the storm was not without rewards to us. It drove the mosquitoes away, and when the rain and hail ceased as suddenly as it commenced, we filled every available camp vessel with hailstones. That evening we had the finest drinking water of our entire tour down the Missouri, and enough left to fill our canteens for the next day's cruising.
The hail, which by this time had begun cutting leaves off the trees all around us, was making a frightful din. But even above the racket I heard a noise that sounded like some sort of Indian war dance. Looking about, I was convulsed with laughter as I discovered the source of the noise. It was Wilton, working to set up camp, and running around like a madman with a galvanized iron bucket over his head, and the bail of the bucket for a chin strap to keep from losing it.The hailstones were rattling down on the top of the bucket with a noise that sounded like an orchestra of tom-toms. I'd have given a ten dollar note for a photograph of the rotund cameraman at that instant. But, the picture that was made impossible by the rain would have been incomplete without a phonograph record of the sound made by the hailstones rattling against his improvised weather helmet.
While we had somewhat of a wet camp that night, the storm was not without rewards to us. It drove the mosquitoes away, and when the rain and hail ceased as suddenly as it commenced, we filled every available camp vessel with hailstones. That evening we had the finest drinking water of our entire tour down the Missouri, and enough left to fill our canteens for the next day's cruising.
(this is about half way through Part 2,
it is Friday afternoon,
and it is time for me to start baking oatmeal cookies.
So, look for the second half next weekend.)
Tangentially interesting to me was this ad from Elto. I went looking for ads aimed at silty water outboarders, but found no Evinrude Motor Company ads from this period. Evinrude himself seems to have placed Elto into that 1925 marketing niche by clearly identifying his Propello Pump as an answer.
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