Showcases sunken treasures, harvested from a farmer’s field.
Nineteenth-century pioneers quipped that the big Western rivers were “too thick to drink, too thin to plow.” Boatmen knew that beneath these turbulent, muddy waters lay hidden dangers, chief among them submerged tree trunks and branches. Such “snags” claimed nearly 300 of the 400 steamboats lost along the Missouri River during the period. Among them was the 171-foot paddle-wheeler Arabia.
On September 5, 1856, Arabia was steaming upriver between St. Louis and Council Bluffs, Iowa, with 130 passengers and crew when it struck a snag in Quindaro Bend, just shy of Parkville, Mo. Though the ship heeled violently and sank within minutes, only one life was lost—an unfortunate mule tethered astern. Arabia was carrying 200 tons of food and supplies bound for budding frontier settlements, though whispered rumors also hinted at stashes of gold, whiskey and illegal guns. Fortune hunters mounted several salvage attempts between 1856 and 1897 but recovered only a few odd boxes of shoes and lumber. Shrouded in fine silt, the wreck lay undisturbed for the next 91 years, as the river bend shifted north a half mile.
In 1987 the Hawley family, amateur historians and owners of an Independence-based refrigeration company, pinpointed the wreck 45 feet beneath a Kansas cornfield owned by retired magistrate Norman Sortor. (Sortor’s grandfather, Elisha, had bought the land from Wyandot Indians in the 1860s, a decade after Arabia’s sinking.) Sortor granted the Hawleys permission to unearth the wreck the following year, after the fall harvest. Five partners ultimately pooled nearly a million dollars in borrowed funds to excavate Arabia, using backhoes, bulldozers and a 100-ton crane. A cordon of industrial pumps kept the Missouri from inundating the site. Two weeks of digging exposed the spokes of a paddle wheel and the first relic—a small shoe, clearly stamped GOODYEAR on its black rubber sole. Deeper still lay boxes, barrels and crates packed with merchandise, a largely intact record of 19th-century pioneer life. The lack of oxygen and steady temperatures underground had preserved even the most fragile wood, rubber and wool items. The team readily spent an additional $1 million plus on a museum in Kansas City, Mo., to house its invaluable find.
Visitors to the Arabia Steamboat Museum first encounter the preserved 6-ton stern of the ship, with visible draft marks and flecks of original white paint. Beyond is a full-size reproduction of Arabia’s main deck, flanked by its massive boilers, its steam engine and a working replica of one of its twin 28-foot paddle wheels, which laps rhythmically at a pool of water in the interior atrium. Nearby, the skeleton of the drowned mule—dubbed Lawrence in jest—grins morbidly from his sandy grave. Another display holds the walnut snag that doomed Arabia. Visitors can also peer into the on-site lab as preservationists work to restore the cargo, a process expected to stretch another 15 years.
After viewing a brief video history of the ship and its recovery, visitors enter the heart of the museum, a gallery resembling a mid-century general store, stocked with all the necessities and luxuries. Shelves fairly groan with restored cookware and china, brass and porcelain knickknacks, rows of shoes and boots, and bottled preserves so fresh that the pickles retain their snap—and their flavor, insist the Hawleys.
The heyday of sewing is memorialized in rows of bright threads and yarn, needles and scissors, thimbles and tens of thousands of intricately patterned buttons. Cloth and finished clothing in a spectrum of colors belies the Victorian stereotype of drab blacks and browns. (While cottons didn’t survive, their colors did, dyeing the mud that filled fabric boxes.) Other finds—English china, Chinese silk, South American tobacco and French perfume —speak to a flourishing foreign trade. Bottles of the reproduced fragrance are available in the gift shop.
The Arabia Steamboat Museum [www .1856.com] is at 400 Grand Boulevard in Kansas City. Tours are given every half hour, Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (closing at 5:30 p.m.) and Sundays noon to 3:30 p.m. (closing at 5 p.m.). Allot 90 minutes. Adult admission is $12.50. Call (816) 471-1856 for more information.
Originally published in the August 2009 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
