130 year old steamboat dug up in Kansas

This article (along with pics) is 5 years old, but this is the first I have heard of it. Very interesting!

www.abandonedspaces.com/uncategorized/arabia.html?firefox=1

YouTube has lots of tours of their museum. Unfortunately there is no National Geographic style documentary film of the excavation but none the less lots of fascinating videos about this on YT. That steamer was fully loaded to supply many General stores along the river and many of the artifacts rescued back in 1989 are STILL in refrigeration awaiting restoration.

They did an episode of 'Beyond Oak Island' on the ship and the people digging it up. It was quite interesting.

That entire link has stuff that is interesting as hell. It's amazing how deep this steamboat sunk until it stopped. I wonder if it stopped on a layer of bedrock or something???

It is very interesting. I am just shocked that the whole episode has not gotten more exposure.

What sank the Arabia was really caused by the operation of the riverboats themselves. They burned wood not coal. All steamboats had there crew cut down trees along the river for fuel and this created various dead trees/ limbs to litter both shoreline sides of the river creating hazards. Lots of trees just below the water surface waiting to impale the hulls or traveling steamers.

i saw that. it was pretty cool

here ya go... https://youtu.be/6_vdafsHSwA

I believe a lot of people don't think about how much rivers move over time.

Very cool story! I love stuff like this!

Well, at least they used to.

Now there's way too much money and infrastructure at stake to let them naturally move like they should. Corps of Engineers keeps them "in place". (The big rivers, anyway.)

I used to drive through the Teays Valley in WVa on I64 a lot.
Then by chance I read a geology paper about how that tiny stream could have never carved out such a wide and deep valley.

The explanation was
“all the eastern rivers used to be way different before the Ice Ages began.”

It is quite a story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teays_River