Here is the continuation of Part 2 of John Edwin Hoag's article.
He is at Pierre, South Dakota now.
Part 2 also contains the first exclamation mark I have encountered in transcribing the article so far.
On the afternoon of July 3, we tied up at Pierre, the capital of South Dakota, spent the Fourth there, and departed down river on the 5th. A few days later, while still in South Dakota, we set up the radio outfit in camp one evening, and picked up a broadcast news report concerning ourselves. The announcement came from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to effect that the transcontinental motor boat expedition was believed to have met disaster in the Missouri River. We had not been seen or heard from for three days, and - "grave fears were entertained for our safety." Persons living along the river were requested to be on the lookout for us, and in the event of the boat being sighted to report the fact to the Council Bluffs station.
The following day at Greenwood, South Dakota, I telegraphed the broadcasting station informing them we'd picked their message out of the air, that we were coming right along down the river, and would stop at Council Bluffs in a few days. On June 14, I delivered a twenty minute dissertation on transcontinental motor boat cruising to an invisible audience from the Council Bluffs radio station from which we'd previously been reported as among the missing. My father and mother, who live in Kansas City, sat in their parlor and heard every word as if I'd been in the same room. Friends in Chicago, Wichita, Kansas; and St. Paul, Minnesota, later reported they recognized my voice.
The Missouri River never ceased to be a stream of surprises, surprises that did not always come in the form of snags, unseen sandbars, or falling cut banks. One of these surprises came late one afternoon just as we passed under the railroad bridge across the river at the little town of Rulo, Nebraska. We were looking for a place to camp when we espied a camp on the Nebraska side that was already set up. Several men on the riverside gesticulated wildly for us to come ashore. We landed. The leader of the party introduced himself as Dr. Claude P. Rordyce, of Falls City, Nebraska. They had a camp set up, dinner cooked, and everything all ready just as we came into sight around a bend in the river. As fine a lot of outdoors men as we ever met. They had about ten cooking spiders full of fried chicken, a huge pot of roasting ears, and trimmings enough to have fed a small regiment. We took nothing out of our boat that night but our bedding, and spent as pleasant an evening there as we had on our entire trip from ocean to ocean.
A few days later near St. Joseph, Missouri, we looked down the river and saw a dozen men on the Kansas side of the river. They were carrying elongated objects on their shoulders, and looked like a party of civil engineers. As we came nearer, I took a look with my field glasses, and discovered somewhat to our chagrin that the party on shore was either a squad of highwaymen or officers of the law. The things they carried over their shoulders were high powered rifles. Presently the rifles were leveled at us, and the men began beckoning us to come ashore. Whether they were robbers or deputies made little difference. Sitting out there on the river in a boat with a battery of rifles pointed at us - there was no alternative but to obey orders. We went ashore. The leader of the band came forward flashing a sheriff's badge.
Then, he read the name of our boat and her port of registry aloud. "Astoria, Oregon."he exclaimed. "But how in the name of helzbelz did you fellows ever get over here?"
At that instant a burly deputy in the rear laughed uproariously. "Haw, haw, haw. That's a good one on you, Bill. These fellows are not the birds you are looking for. I know who these boys are - ain't you been readin' about 'em in every newspaper you've seen for the last six weeks?"
"Oh, ye-ah." answered the sheriff, scratching his head somewhat sheepishly. "I reckon you're not the outfit we're after."
We learned from our conversations with the men that they had just completed raiding a moonshine still in the river bottom. They'd pinched a three-worm still, two moonshiners, a quantity of mash, and miscellaneous jugs, bottles, and demijohns full of moonshine. They also had a tipoff that a boatload of sugar was coming down the river on the way to the still. So, when they heard our boat popping around the bend upriver, their logical conclusion was - "Here comes the sugar."
When he discovered his error the sheriff was very apologetic. He lined his men up for us at our request for a picture, and as partial compensation for the trouble he'd caused us, offered us a 2 gallon demijohn of the confiscated liquor. I took a smell of the stuff, and almost choked to death. It would have knocked a pink elephant dead at forty yards!
We docked at St. Joseph, Missouri, late the same afternoon (June 16th), where we were greeted by my father , two St. Joseph newspaper reporters, two reporters from Kansas City; Jack Moffet of the Kansas City Star, and Paul Jenkins of the Kansas City Journal-Post; and a 16-year old nephew of mine - the son of my eldest brother. This was the delegation we were to haul down the river the next day in a boat that was already loaded almost to the gunwales. The problem was solved, however, when a St. Joseph citizen who was going to Kansas City with a motor truck volunteered to haul a load of equipment for us. So, we pulled out about a half ton of gear, loaded it into the truck, and made room for all the Kansas City passengers.
It is exactly a hundred miles down the Missouri River from St. Joseph to Kansas City. Our usual day's run down the river had averaged from sixty to one hundred and sixty miles per day. A day's mileage was altogether dependent upon how many sandbars we ran afoul of. There were many days on the Missouri when we rolled off a hundred miles or more between daybreak and noon. High hopes would be raised for smashing a day's distance record, but usually those hopes would go glimmering when the boat grated onto a sand bar, and came to a sudden stop. There was no such thing as getting off a sandbar by backing up. The current was usually too strong, and the shallowness of the river precluded the use of power either ahead or in reverse.
When we got on to a bar there was no way to get off except to wash over it. We frequently spent as much as three hours washing over a bar - moving perhaps three hundred yards where we didn't have six inches of water to float our craft with a draft of approximately eighteen inches. Washing over a bar was simply utilizing the same current that put us on the bar, and which prevented us backing up, to carry us on over places where we didn't have enough water to float. Whenever we hung up, the current would inevitably swing us around broadside. Then it would begin washing the sand out from under the hull. The sand washing process would continue for about ten minutes, and then the boat would move perhaps three or four feet. We, of course, would speed the process of washing over a bar as much as we could by piling overboard, and swinging the boat to take advantage of the maximum placering effect of the current. Frequently, when we came to the end of a bar the sand would shelf off so suddenly into deep water that the boat would go adrift, and we'd have to swim after it to get aboard. As for keeping off the bars - the oldest and most experienced Missouri River boatman will testify that the man hasn't lived who could navigate the river without getting hung up occasionally.
From the mouth of the Yellowstone to the Mississippi the water is completely opaque. Absolutely nothing can be told as to the depth of the water by looking at the surface. Hence, in an unchartable stream where visibility ends at the surface, successful navigation depends almost wholly upon judgement and personal ability to read certain surface indications as shown by the current. The deepest water is invariably found wherever the current is the swiftest. But, the current swings from one side of the river to the other. Frequent crossings are necessary to follow the current, and often in making the crossing it is purely a matter of guess work as to where the swiftest current is. There is always deep water along the edge of a cut bank, so wherever the cut banks end, usually sandbar troubles begin. Snags, of which there are no less than a million between the mouth of the Yellowstone and the Mississippi, are easily avoided - a fact that is attested to by our having navigated down 2284 miles of the river, and among uncountable snags, without ever touching one. A protruding snag is easily seen and avoided, while a submerged one invariably breaks water and swirls the current below it to indicate its position.
Leaving St. Joseph, Missouri, early on the morning of July 17, it seems reasonable that we could run the one hundred miles to Kansas City, and arrive there around four o'clock in the afternoon. Sandbars, however, changed our plans somewhat. Fifteen miles down the river from St. Joseph, we ran past the end of a cut bank, and attempted a crossing where one man's guess was about as good as another's as to where the deepest water was. We hung up on a bar, and for the next hour the entire party - newspaper men included, labored overboard in B.V.D.s, before Transcontinental was again floated. A second sandbar took another hour off the schedule before we landed in Atcheson, Kansas, for lunch, and to let the newspaper men get their stories on the wires. At 6:30 that evening we rounded the bend above the mouth of the Kaw River, bumped over several sandbars on a very dangerous crossing, but without hanging up, and came in sight of Kansas City.
Coming into Kansas City was one of the biggest thrills for me of the entire trip. I was coming down the river to the old town where most of my boyhood days were spent - the home of my parents, several brothers, one sister and innumerable friends. Just as we rounded the Kaw River bend, Jenkins, the Journal-Post reporter, who'd been doing a turn on the wheel, called back to me: "Johnny, for the love of Mike -LOOK." I looked and could see little dots on the docks, and all along the waterfront, that looked like a swarm of ants. Another look with my field glasses, each dot became a human being. the entire waterfront was literally festooned with people - people who had waited there from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly 7 P.M. in the broiling sun, just to see the boat with the men and the dog, who were attempting to blaze a water trail across North America. A few minutes later we landed on the float at the foot of Delaware Avenue, where the milling crowd nearly tore the docks down in an effort to get a look at us.
Cameras and movie machines were clicking in all directions when I virtually broke up the entire show. Glancing back into the crowd I saw but one thing -my mother - and made a dive in that direction. For about two minutes I didn't even see two brothers, one sister, and a miscellaneous assortment of nephews, cousins, in-laws, etc. who were gathered on the dock. The fact that her son was already half way across the continent by motor boat, and the chief topic of the columns of daily newspaper comment, didn't seem to impress my mother nearly so much as the blackness of my complexion. Sun baked and weather beaten from weeks in the open air along the Columbia and MissouriRivers, all three members of the transcontinental party were so blackened as scarcely to represent the Caucasian Race. Thus my mother's greatest surprise was that this sun blackened specimen of humanity was actually her own flesh and blood - her son, whose father is a Scotchman.
The naming of the skiff was appropriate, the same being significant of the rise in business of Walter S. Dickey, publisher of the Kansas City Journal-Post. The writer has known Mr. Dickey for many years, and has seen him come up from an average business man to one of the wealthiest and most influential citizens in this rapidly expanding mid-west metropolis.
Years ago the Dickey Clay Products Company was his chief business enterprise. There was on the market at that time a clay pigeon used for shotgun target trap shooting under the name of Dickey Birds. Hence Dickey Bird as the name of the skiff that carried the newspaper reporter on the remainder of the 400 mile cruise down the Missouri in tow of the Transcontinental.
The last lap of our run down the Missouri was made more difficult by the fact that during our stay in Kansas City the river had lowered approximately two and a half feet. Consequently, we began to have more trouble with sand bars below Kansas City than we'd had on the 1894 miles of the river above. To put it in Jenkin's words: "There's nothing wrong with the MIssouri River for commercial navigation except that the bottom is to close to the top."
Our late start out of Kansas City permitted us to get down the river only 40 miles that day. We passed under the Santa Fe Railroad bridge at Sibley, Missouri, found a good camp site on the north side of the river below the bridge, and tied up for the night. Jenkins wanted to swim across the river to get into the town and put his story on the wire, but after some thought couldn't figure out how to take care of his clothing problem while swimming the river and also entering the town.
The current, moreover, would land him down the river at least two miles below the village with a hike back through a bottomland jungle of willows infested by billions of mosquitoes. We offer We offered to take him across in the Transcontinental but he declined, saying: "I think I'll walk the bridge." The bridge is about a mile long, very high, and without any flooring. It is a railroad trestle only, but the newspaperman declared he wanted the exercise. "Besides," he said, "I've always had a curiosity to see just what that bridge is like." I cooked up a big feed that evening, and after eating, Jenkins struck out. He got back to camp about midnight declaring he'd found the railroad bridge somewhat more of a structure than he'd anticipated.
Spy also had a little adventure of his own. He wandered out from camp, as was his usual habit, in quest of cats, skunks, field mice, muskrats, or anything that gratified his canine curiosity. He evidently found something he wasn't looking for. At least, he came back to camp the next morning the sorriest looking dog that ever gnawed a bone. His eyes were all swelled shut, he was covered with welts from the end of his nose to the tip of his tail. To all appearances he'd investigated a hive of bees, or a nest of hornets. He was a very sick dog for several days, and it was weeks before his eyes cleared up, in spite of the most careful doctoring administered several times of day by his master.
Due to the low stage of water, our many encounters with unavoidable sand bars, the cruise from Kansas City to St. Louis consumed a week, instead of the four days as we had scheduled it. And, but for the assistance given us by Jenkins, it would have probably taken longer. The newspaperman seemed to be familiar with every inch of the river below Kansas City, and when we questioned him abut the source of his knowledge he admitted that he had made the trip from Kansas City to St. Louis in a canoe some weeks before. This resulted in his removal from Dickey Bird to the pilot seat of the Transcontinental.
Wilton then took up his station in Dickey Bird, got his camera set up and secured with a most ingenious assembly of hay wire, ropes and leather strips. The cameraman was forever rigging up
something. He rigged up a life preserver on one of the bows to keep the sun off himself, and then usually spent the rest of the day re-rigging it as the boat and sun continually shifted positions. He rigged up some concoction of kerosene, carbolic acid, and quinine, as a lotion for discouraging mosquitoes. I tried it but decided mosquitoes were the lesser evil. He rigged up a hook for handling parcels in and out of the forepeak storage locker when his own rotund figure persistently gained weight in spite of his efforts to reduce, and when he found it difficult to crawl in and out through the small water tight door. He rigged up a trunk strap for a back rest behind the forward seat where he rode most of the time. He rigged up a magnificent assortment of scrap iron and bolts for fastening a movie camera on the forward deck of the Transcontinental. From Astoria to New York, the cameraman was busy attempting to rig up scraps of something into forms that he could use, and with varying degrees of success. I think the only time on the trip when he was not rigging something was when he was asleep. At that time he could give the most perfect imitation of a saw mill, a whistling buoy, and an overheated steam boiler - all in the same nap. But, I shouldn't poke too much fun at him, for on the whole he proved himself as thorough an outdoors man as I have ever traveled with. Always happy, always good natured, nothing ever discouraged him. If there was work to be done he was usually at it, and nothing ever happened to us that was so bad he couldn't say: "Oh. Well. It might have been worse."
These traits of the cameraman were never better illustrated than the first day that he attempted making pictures from Dickey Bird. After he got the camera set up, we let the skiff out on about sixty feet of rope so he could grind off a few feet of film of Transcontinental cruising down the river, scooting past snags and avoiding cut banks. We cruised past several snags, going dangerously close to them for the special benefit of the motion picture man. But, we didn't go close enough to suit him. He gesticulated wildly, pointed out another snag, and motioned for us to steer closer to it. The snag he had selected was the whole backbone of a huge cottonwood tree that stuck up out of the river with the current boiling and swirling around it. That time, Jenkins, who was at the wheel, put the boat within six inches of the snag. We cleared it, but Dickey Bird didn't.
The boat in tow veered from its course a bit, sideswiped the snag, and sent the cameraman sprawling into the bottom of the craft. Although the smaller craft came very near to upsetting, and the camera man was down - he never let go of the camera crank, or ceased to turn it. Next he signaled us to steer close to a cut bank where the river was swallowing a cornfield to the rate of fifty tons a bite. We went as close to the falling bank as we dared go without grave danger of getting part of the cornfield down on top of us, but that wasn't close enough for the cameraman. He motioned us to go closer, so we took the risk - and went. Then, he began turning the crank of the movie machine, but still motioning us to go closer to the bank. We were cruising about as close to the cut bank as we could go without actually hitting it, and expecting it to come down on us every instant, when just what the crank-turner wanted to happen did happen. A piece of farm weighing perhaps fifty tons, and loaded with standing corn, suddenly splashed into the river between Transcontinental and her tow. The landslide didn't get entirely under the water when the Dickey Bird got there. The bow of the little boat struck the island of earth just as it was disappearing under the edge of the cut bank. For an instant the Transcontinental was at a standstill. The tow line tightened up like a fiddle string, and I caught a glimpse of the Dickey Bird completely out of the water. It literally took to the air over the obstruction that had dropped down in front of it - but, the cameraman never ceased turning the crank, although it was nothing but sheer luck that his boat managed to land in the water right side up.
We thought that experience would forever cure him of taking chances, but it didn't. He put a new film magazine in his camera, and began motioning us closer to his cut bank. That time we got him as close as he wanted to go. We were skimming along within three feet of the bank when Dickey Bird, swinging on the tow line collided with it. The movie man sat down with a thud on the starboard gunwale, and he would have unquestionably gone onerboard but for the perpendicular wall of the cut bank checking his momentum. He scraped the cut bank for at least 20 feet with his back before the boat slid off the soft mud into the river, shipped water, and sent the cameraman scurrying off the gunwale. As it was we got away from that section of cut bank just in the nick of time. We were no sooner clear of the bank when down came a hundred yard chunk of it - corn and all - along the entire front where the both boats had been but an instant before. The swell thrown across the river by the falling bank all but swamped Dickey Bird. The cameraman had had enough and decided to come aboard Transcontinental.
About a year ago, the Missouri during high water flooded over into the Osage River. It cut a narrow channel into the Osage of sufficient depth to remain flowing when the larger river receded. This a portion of the water from the Missouri now flows into the Osage, and goes down the bed of the tributary stream, returning to the Missouri through the mouth of the Osage ten miles below where it went in.
At noon on the sixth day of cruising after leaving Kansas City, we landed at St. Charles, Missouri, lunched and lugged ten gallons of gasoline from an uptown garage to the boat in the river. It should be mentioned here that we gassed up at a marine filling station in Portland, Oregon, and never saw another marine filling station until we got to St. Louis - the only dock we ever saw in that distance, was at Kansas City. In these thousands of miles of water travel, every drop of gasoline had been lugged to the boat in five gallon cans from automobile service stations on shore, or was delivered to us by the various oil companies at the rivers. We also paid the conventional state road tax on nearly every gallon used in the craft. We could, of course, have taken receipts for the taxes paid on the gasoline for boat use, and collected a refund - but it would have involved a mass of correspondence and business detail that would never have paid for the effort. Thus, the entire western half of the cruise, or that portion of it from Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi River could be likened to a cross-country automobile tour without a single garage, filling station, road map, or guide post.
It is also interesting to note that the distance covered by Transcontinental down the Missouri River from Fort Benton, Montana, to the Mississippi River - 2,284 miles, is the exact equivalent of the railroad distance from Los Angeles to Chicago by the route taken by one of the best known passenger trains, The Rock Island-Southern Pacific, Golden State Limited.
He is at Pierre, South Dakota now.
Part 2 also contains the first exclamation mark I have encountered in transcribing the article so far.
On the afternoon of July 3, we tied up at Pierre, the capital of South Dakota, spent the Fourth there, and departed down river on the 5th. A few days later, while still in South Dakota, we set up the radio outfit in camp one evening, and picked up a broadcast news report concerning ourselves. The announcement came from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to effect that the transcontinental motor boat expedition was believed to have met disaster in the Missouri River. We had not been seen or heard from for three days, and - "grave fears were entertained for our safety." Persons living along the river were requested to be on the lookout for us, and in the event of the boat being sighted to report the fact to the Council Bluffs station.
The following day at Greenwood, South Dakota, I telegraphed the broadcasting station informing them we'd picked their message out of the air, that we were coming right along down the river, and would stop at Council Bluffs in a few days. On June 14, I delivered a twenty minute dissertation on transcontinental motor boat cruising to an invisible audience from the Council Bluffs radio station from which we'd previously been reported as among the missing. My father and mother, who live in Kansas City, sat in their parlor and heard every word as if I'd been in the same room. Friends in Chicago, Wichita, Kansas; and St. Paul, Minnesota, later reported they recognized my voice.
The Missouri River never ceased to be a stream of surprises, surprises that did not always come in the form of snags, unseen sandbars, or falling cut banks. One of these surprises came late one afternoon just as we passed under the railroad bridge across the river at the little town of Rulo, Nebraska. We were looking for a place to camp when we espied a camp on the Nebraska side that was already set up. Several men on the riverside gesticulated wildly for us to come ashore. We landed. The leader of the party introduced himself as Dr. Claude P. Rordyce, of Falls City, Nebraska. They had a camp set up, dinner cooked, and everything all ready just as we came into sight around a bend in the river. As fine a lot of outdoors men as we ever met. They had about ten cooking spiders full of fried chicken, a huge pot of roasting ears, and trimmings enough to have fed a small regiment. We took nothing out of our boat that night but our bedding, and spent as pleasant an evening there as we had on our entire trip from ocean to ocean.
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| I can't believe eBay had the exact bridge Hoag just mentioned! |
Then, he read the name of our boat and her port of registry aloud. "Astoria, Oregon."he exclaimed. "But how in the name of helzbelz did you fellows ever get over here?"
At that instant a burly deputy in the rear laughed uproariously. "Haw, haw, haw. That's a good one on you, Bill. These fellows are not the birds you are looking for. I know who these boys are - ain't you been readin' about 'em in every newspaper you've seen for the last six weeks?"
"Oh, ye-ah." answered the sheriff, scratching his head somewhat sheepishly. "I reckon you're not the outfit we're after."
We learned from our conversations with the men that they had just completed raiding a moonshine still in the river bottom. They'd pinched a three-worm still, two moonshiners, a quantity of mash, and miscellaneous jugs, bottles, and demijohns full of moonshine. They also had a tipoff that a boatload of sugar was coming down the river on the way to the still. So, when they heard our boat popping around the bend upriver, their logical conclusion was - "Here comes the sugar."
When he discovered his error the sheriff was very apologetic. He lined his men up for us at our request for a picture, and as partial compensation for the trouble he'd caused us, offered us a 2 gallon demijohn of the confiscated liquor. I took a smell of the stuff, and almost choked to death. It would have knocked a pink elephant dead at forty yards!
We docked at St. Joseph, Missouri, late the same afternoon (June 16th), where we were greeted by my father , two St. Joseph newspaper reporters, two reporters from Kansas City; Jack Moffet of the Kansas City Star, and Paul Jenkins of the Kansas City Journal-Post; and a 16-year old nephew of mine - the son of my eldest brother. This was the delegation we were to haul down the river the next day in a boat that was already loaded almost to the gunwales. The problem was solved, however, when a St. Joseph citizen who was going to Kansas City with a motor truck volunteered to haul a load of equipment for us. So, we pulled out about a half ton of gear, loaded it into the truck, and made room for all the Kansas City passengers.
It is exactly a hundred miles down the Missouri River from St. Joseph to Kansas City. Our usual day's run down the river had averaged from sixty to one hundred and sixty miles per day. A day's mileage was altogether dependent upon how many sandbars we ran afoul of. There were many days on the Missouri when we rolled off a hundred miles or more between daybreak and noon. High hopes would be raised for smashing a day's distance record, but usually those hopes would go glimmering when the boat grated onto a sand bar, and came to a sudden stop. There was no such thing as getting off a sandbar by backing up. The current was usually too strong, and the shallowness of the river precluded the use of power either ahead or in reverse.
When we got on to a bar there was no way to get off except to wash over it. We frequently spent as much as three hours washing over a bar - moving perhaps three hundred yards where we didn't have six inches of water to float our craft with a draft of approximately eighteen inches. Washing over a bar was simply utilizing the same current that put us on the bar, and which prevented us backing up, to carry us on over places where we didn't have enough water to float. Whenever we hung up, the current would inevitably swing us around broadside. Then it would begin washing the sand out from under the hull. The sand washing process would continue for about ten minutes, and then the boat would move perhaps three or four feet. We, of course, would speed the process of washing over a bar as much as we could by piling overboard, and swinging the boat to take advantage of the maximum placering effect of the current. Frequently, when we came to the end of a bar the sand would shelf off so suddenly into deep water that the boat would go adrift, and we'd have to swim after it to get aboard. As for keeping off the bars - the oldest and most experienced Missouri River boatman will testify that the man hasn't lived who could navigate the river without getting hung up occasionally.
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| Gavins Point segment of the Missouri National Recreational River upstream of National Park Service Mulberry Bend Left -1999, Right - 2011. Source: US Dept. of Interior |
From the mouth of the Yellowstone to the Mississippi the water is completely opaque. Absolutely nothing can be told as to the depth of the water by looking at the surface. Hence, in an unchartable stream where visibility ends at the surface, successful navigation depends almost wholly upon judgement and personal ability to read certain surface indications as shown by the current. The deepest water is invariably found wherever the current is the swiftest. But, the current swings from one side of the river to the other. Frequent crossings are necessary to follow the current, and often in making the crossing it is purely a matter of guess work as to where the swiftest current is. There is always deep water along the edge of a cut bank, so wherever the cut banks end, usually sandbar troubles begin. Snags, of which there are no less than a million between the mouth of the Yellowstone and the Mississippi, are easily avoided - a fact that is attested to by our having navigated down 2284 miles of the river, and among uncountable snags, without ever touching one. A protruding snag is easily seen and avoided, while a submerged one invariably breaks water and swirls the current below it to indicate its position.
Leaving St. Joseph, Missouri, early on the morning of July 17, it seems reasonable that we could run the one hundred miles to Kansas City, and arrive there around four o'clock in the afternoon. Sandbars, however, changed our plans somewhat. Fifteen miles down the river from St. Joseph, we ran past the end of a cut bank, and attempted a crossing where one man's guess was about as good as another's as to where the deepest water was. We hung up on a bar, and for the next hour the entire party - newspaper men included, labored overboard in B.V.D.s, before Transcontinental was again floated. A second sandbar took another hour off the schedule before we landed in Atcheson, Kansas, for lunch, and to let the newspaper men get their stories on the wires. At 6:30 that evening we rounded the bend above the mouth of the Kaw River, bumped over several sandbars on a very dangerous crossing, but without hanging up, and came in sight of Kansas City.
Kansas City is in the upper left corner of the map. You have to move the little gray rectangle over
the small image above on the lower right
the small image above on the lower right
to view the part you want to see.
Coming into Kansas City was one of the biggest thrills for me of the entire trip. I was coming down the river to the old town where most of my boyhood days were spent - the home of my parents, several brothers, one sister and innumerable friends. Just as we rounded the Kaw River bend, Jenkins, the Journal-Post reporter, who'd been doing a turn on the wheel, called back to me: "Johnny, for the love of Mike -LOOK." I looked and could see little dots on the docks, and all along the waterfront, that looked like a swarm of ants. Another look with my field glasses, each dot became a human being. the entire waterfront was literally festooned with people - people who had waited there from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly 7 P.M. in the broiling sun, just to see the boat with the men and the dog, who were attempting to blaze a water trail across North America. A few minutes later we landed on the float at the foot of Delaware Avenue, where the milling crowd nearly tore the docks down in an effort to get a look at us.
Cameras and movie machines were clicking in all directions when I virtually broke up the entire show. Glancing back into the crowd I saw but one thing -my mother - and made a dive in that direction. For about two minutes I didn't even see two brothers, one sister, and a miscellaneous assortment of nephews, cousins, in-laws, etc. who were gathered on the dock. The fact that her son was already half way across the continent by motor boat, and the chief topic of the columns of daily newspaper comment, didn't seem to impress my mother nearly so much as the blackness of my complexion. Sun baked and weather beaten from weeks in the open air along the Columbia and MissouriRivers, all three members of the transcontinental party were so blackened as scarcely to represent the Caucasian Race. Thus my mother's greatest surprise was that this sun blackened specimen of humanity was actually her own flesh and blood - her son, whose father is a Scotchman.
Prior to our arrival in Kansas City we had put in such long days and strenuous hours on the Missouri that we felt somewhat in need of a rest, and a diversion from camp life and my own camp cookery. There was no point on the entire transcontinental run where this could have been done to better advantage than in Kansas City, where all we had to do was move in under my father's roof, and live on home cooking such as only one's own mother can produce. We remained in Kansas City for a week resting up and taking life easy. Meanwhile, we'd had more than our share of space in the Kansas City newspapers, and got the boat and motors thoroughly overhauled for the cruise down the remaining 400 miles of the Missouri River.
Spy, also contributed his share toward the spreading of printers ink by going AWOL from the custody of one of my young nephews in whose care we'd left him. The dog evidently started out to find Wilton, his master, but soon found it quite an undertaking in a city of nearly half a million people. As soon as we got word he'd gone adrift, we notified newspaper editors. Forthwith, the papers came out next morning with front page stories about the transcontinental water dog that had deserted the ship. I borrowed Dad's car and retrieved the derelict terrier nearly five miles from the point where he'd been last seen.
Before leaving Kansas City the editor of the Kansas City Journal-Post requested our consent for sending a reporter down the river aboard Transcontinental. He stated that his interest in the cruise centered chiefly around the possibilities it served to illustrate on behalf of commercial navigation of our inland waterways. We were somewhat hesitant about granting the editor's request until he advised us the man he proposed to send was none other than Paul Jenkins, the reporter who had previously accompanied us down the river from St. Joseph. We'd seen just about enough of Mr. Jenkins to know he was a 100 per cent HE-MAN, as well as a gentleman and clever newspaperman. The editor was promptly informed we'd be delighted to have his representative along. We later talked with Jenkins, and learned that he'd been pulling every possible editorial wire to be permitted to make the trip. When we told Jenkins that we desired to tow a skiff down the river for the purpose of using it as a camera boat, he promptly took himself up the Kaw River, bought a boat, and floated down to the foot of Delaware Avenue on the Missouri.
During our sojourn in Kansas City the weather remained as hot and sultry and sticky, as weather ever gets in that section of the country in July. The only respite we got from the terrific heat was on the morning of July 26, the Saturday following our arrival there, when we decided to shove off down the river. That morning it poured down rain, and along with it some of the most villainous thunder and lightening imaginable. The skies literally opened to belch forth fire and water together, to the accompaniment of noises that made the gun practice of the Pacific Battle Fleet sound like a mediocre Fourth of July celebration by comparison. It would have been idiotic to have started out in such weather. So, instead of getting started at 8 o'clock in the morning we waited until 2 o'clock in the afternoon before the weather broke, and we got under way. The skiff, which Jenkins had brought down from the Kaw River was christened Dickey Bird, and we set out down the river towing the craft astern with the reporter sitting in it calmly smoking his pipe. Before leaving Kansas City the editor of the Kansas City Journal-Post requested our consent for sending a reporter down the river aboard Transcontinental. He stated that his interest in the cruise centered chiefly around the possibilities it served to illustrate on behalf of commercial navigation of our inland waterways. We were somewhat hesitant about granting the editor's request until he advised us the man he proposed to send was none other than Paul Jenkins, the reporter who had previously accompanied us down the river from St. Joseph. We'd seen just about enough of Mr. Jenkins to know he was a 100 per cent HE-MAN, as well as a gentleman and clever newspaperman. The editor was promptly informed we'd be delighted to have his representative along. We later talked with Jenkins, and learned that he'd been pulling every possible editorial wire to be permitted to make the trip. When we told Jenkins that we desired to tow a skiff down the river for the purpose of using it as a camera boat, he promptly took himself up the Kaw River, bought a boat, and floated down to the foot of Delaware Avenue on the Missouri.
The naming of the skiff was appropriate, the same being significant of the rise in business of Walter S. Dickey, publisher of the Kansas City Journal-Post. The writer has known Mr. Dickey for many years, and has seen him come up from an average business man to one of the wealthiest and most influential citizens in this rapidly expanding mid-west metropolis.
Years ago the Dickey Clay Products Company was his chief business enterprise. There was on the market at that time a clay pigeon used for shotgun target trap shooting under the name of Dickey Birds. Hence Dickey Bird as the name of the skiff that carried the newspaper reporter on the remainder of the 400 mile cruise down the Missouri in tow of the Transcontinental.
The last lap of our run down the Missouri was made more difficult by the fact that during our stay in Kansas City the river had lowered approximately two and a half feet. Consequently, we began to have more trouble with sand bars below Kansas City than we'd had on the 1894 miles of the river above. To put it in Jenkin's words: "There's nothing wrong with the MIssouri River for commercial navigation except that the bottom is to close to the top."
Our late start out of Kansas City permitted us to get down the river only 40 miles that day. We passed under the Santa Fe Railroad bridge at Sibley, Missouri, found a good camp site on the north side of the river below the bridge, and tied up for the night. Jenkins wanted to swim across the river to get into the town and put his story on the wire, but after some thought couldn't figure out how to take care of his clothing problem while swimming the river and also entering the town.
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| This bridge was the earlier bridge, but it is too cool a picture not to share :-) |
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| This is the bridge they went under. |
Spy also had a little adventure of his own. He wandered out from camp, as was his usual habit, in quest of cats, skunks, field mice, muskrats, or anything that gratified his canine curiosity. He evidently found something he wasn't looking for. At least, he came back to camp the next morning the sorriest looking dog that ever gnawed a bone. His eyes were all swelled shut, he was covered with welts from the end of his nose to the tip of his tail. To all appearances he'd investigated a hive of bees, or a nest of hornets. He was a very sick dog for several days, and it was weeks before his eyes cleared up, in spite of the most careful doctoring administered several times of day by his master.
Due to the low stage of water, our many encounters with unavoidable sand bars, the cruise from Kansas City to St. Louis consumed a week, instead of the four days as we had scheduled it. And, but for the assistance given us by Jenkins, it would have probably taken longer. The newspaperman seemed to be familiar with every inch of the river below Kansas City, and when we questioned him abut the source of his knowledge he admitted that he had made the trip from Kansas City to St. Louis in a canoe some weeks before. This resulted in his removal from Dickey Bird to the pilot seat of the Transcontinental.
Wilton then took up his station in Dickey Bird, got his camera set up and secured with a most ingenious assembly of hay wire, ropes and leather strips. The cameraman was forever rigging up
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| Frank S. Wilton |
These traits of the cameraman were never better illustrated than the first day that he attempted making pictures from Dickey Bird. After he got the camera set up, we let the skiff out on about sixty feet of rope so he could grind off a few feet of film of Transcontinental cruising down the river, scooting past snags and avoiding cut banks. We cruised past several snags, going dangerously close to them for the special benefit of the motion picture man. But, we didn't go close enough to suit him. He gesticulated wildly, pointed out another snag, and motioned for us to steer closer to it. The snag he had selected was the whole backbone of a huge cottonwood tree that stuck up out of the river with the current boiling and swirling around it. That time, Jenkins, who was at the wheel, put the boat within six inches of the snag. We cleared it, but Dickey Bird didn't.
The boat in tow veered from its course a bit, sideswiped the snag, and sent the cameraman sprawling into the bottom of the craft. Although the smaller craft came very near to upsetting, and the camera man was down - he never let go of the camera crank, or ceased to turn it. Next he signaled us to steer close to a cut bank where the river was swallowing a cornfield to the rate of fifty tons a bite. We went as close to the falling bank as we dared go without grave danger of getting part of the cornfield down on top of us, but that wasn't close enough for the cameraman. He motioned us to go closer, so we took the risk - and went. Then, he began turning the crank of the movie machine, but still motioning us to go closer to the bank. We were cruising about as close to the cut bank as we could go without actually hitting it, and expecting it to come down on us every instant, when just what the crank-turner wanted to happen did happen. A piece of farm weighing perhaps fifty tons, and loaded with standing corn, suddenly splashed into the river between Transcontinental and her tow. The landslide didn't get entirely under the water when the Dickey Bird got there. The bow of the little boat struck the island of earth just as it was disappearing under the edge of the cut bank. For an instant the Transcontinental was at a standstill. The tow line tightened up like a fiddle string, and I caught a glimpse of the Dickey Bird completely out of the water. It literally took to the air over the obstruction that had dropped down in front of it - but, the cameraman never ceased turning the crank, although it was nothing but sheer luck that his boat managed to land in the water right side up.
We thought that experience would forever cure him of taking chances, but it didn't. He put a new film magazine in his camera, and began motioning us closer to his cut bank. That time we got him as close as he wanted to go. We were skimming along within three feet of the bank when Dickey Bird, swinging on the tow line collided with it. The movie man sat down with a thud on the starboard gunwale, and he would have unquestionably gone onerboard but for the perpendicular wall of the cut bank checking his momentum. He scraped the cut bank for at least 20 feet with his back before the boat slid off the soft mud into the river, shipped water, and sent the cameraman scurrying off the gunwale. As it was we got away from that section of cut bank just in the nick of time. We were no sooner clear of the bank when down came a hundred yard chunk of it - corn and all - along the entire front where the both boats had been but an instant before. The swell thrown across the river by the falling bank all but swamped Dickey Bird. The cameraman had had enough and decided to come aboard Transcontinental.
Most information on Wilton is on the pay newspaper sites sadly, but I found this which is worth sharing: The Nov. 30, 1919, San Francisco Chronicle reported that H. A. and Sydney Snow, accompanied by cameramen Frank S. Wilton and Donald Keyes, were en route to Capetown, South Africa to join the Simson big game expedition. This expedition would spend two years collecting specimens of all the animals of Australia before proceeding to South Africa. The specimens would fill the new Oakland Museum to be constructed when they returned in 1921.Below Jefferson City, Missouri, we had the unique experience of leaving the Missouri River through a false channel, running into the Osage River, traveling down that stream some ten miles, and coming back into the Missouri again through the original mouth of the Osage. Jenkins discovered this paradox on his canoe trip down the river, and assured us there was ample water in the Osage to make the run through. The explanation of it is simple. The Osage River, a beautiful stream, navigable for many miles above it confluence with the Missouri, ambles down across the state. It flowed very close to the Missouri just below Jefferson City before taking a long eastern swing almost parallel with the Missouri, and discharging into the larger stream some miles further down.
About a year ago, the Missouri during high water flooded over into the Osage River. It cut a narrow channel into the Osage of sufficient depth to remain flowing when the larger river receded. This a portion of the water from the Missouri now flows into the Osage, and goes down the bed of the tributary stream, returning to the Missouri through the mouth of the Osage ten miles below where it went in.
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| You can see where the the breach may have happened. It is healed up now. |
It is also interesting to note that the distance covered by Transcontinental down the Missouri River from Fort Benton, Montana, to the Mississippi River - 2,284 miles, is the exact equivalent of the railroad distance from Los Angeles to Chicago by the route taken by one of the best known passenger trains, The Rock Island-Southern Pacific, Golden State Limited.
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| The Missouri River at St. Charles. |
Thirty miles more would take us out of the stream which had been more or less a nightmare. And, upon reaching the Mississippi we would complete the entire route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In a little more than two months we had traversed the great west that had taken those intrepid explorers three months.
The writer has made an intimate study of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and has never ceased to regard it as one of the most fascinating chapters of American history. But, after having gone over the entire water route that Lewis and Clark and their men traveled, camping on many of their camp sites, and encountering just a few of the obstacles that they encountered; my respect for those indomitable souls is more profound than ever. Even the personal diaries of Lewis and Clark themselves tell nothing more than the highlights of their story. The trial, tribulations, difficulties and dangers that they encountered would be utterly unbelievable.
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| In 1833 Karl Bodmer found the snags as impressive as the company of the Transcontinental found them. |
We found the last thirty miles of the Missouri one of the most difficult stretches to navigate in our entire cruise down the length of the stream. We barely had enough water to float the boat, scraped over innumerable sandbars, went completely aground twice, and pike-poled our way through nearly every yard of the distance from St. Charles to the mouth of the river.
If the Government has made any effort in the last couple years to free the lower river of snags, the work was certainly not in evidence. The river looked like a sunken forest on the last thirty miles, and seemed to get worse and worse as we approached the Mississippi.
We passed under the Bellefontaine railroad bridge, 8 miles above the mouth of the Missouri, and then treaded our way among the snags and through a fairly deep channel until the Father of Waters itself came into view - apparently flowing into the Missouri.
Steering close to the north bank of the Missouri we ran down a line of whirlpools where the clear water of the Mississippi was mingling in curdled masses with the opaque liquid of the Missouri. A hundred yards beyond the whirlpools, we floated off the Missouri River water entirely, and were in clear water entirely - the first we had seen since the Columbia. Our troubles with Missouri silt were at an end, and we shouted until we were nearly hoarse for sheer joy over the thought. I then recalled that years ago when a boy in about the fourth grade in school, one of my teachers had drilled me with the lesson that the Missouri River is the longest river on the face of the earth. The truth of that lesson was never more vivid than when Transcontinental slid out of the mouth of the Missouri and into the Mississippi. I can vouch for it authoritatively.
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| No Bellefontaine railroad bridge postcards, but this is too nice not to post. |
The sun was setting big and red as we put-putted across the Mississippi to the Illinois shore, and tied up for the night - to camp upon the identical spot where Lewis and Clark camped when they assembled their men and equipment for their dash through to the Pacific Ocean exactly 120 years before.
Upon this pot from which Lewis and Clark set out, we set up our radio outfit. In another minute we were listening to music and news reports from Chicago. Then, with a turn of the dials we listened to four different stations in St. Louis, two in Kansas City and one each in Indianapolis, Memphis, and Louisville. Tuning back on St. Louis again we caught the tail end of a news report broadcasted from a St. Louis newspaper station to the effect that - the motor boat Transcontinental was expected to arrive in St. Louis about noon the following day.
Surely, Lewis and Clark would have squirmed in their graves could they have known what was going on at their old camp site that evening.
(To be continued)
