Out of Arkansas - Yo Heave No Mo

Few states have as many natural highways as Arkansas. Before the Corps of Engineers' river management projects, like locks and dams, began in the 1930s, 5l of Arkansas' 75 counties had navigable streams, of which 3,500 miles could be used by steamboats, including 1,500 miles on a year-round basis.

These river roads were essential for the settlement and commercial development of the state during the l9th century. In the early 1800s explorers and traders used canoes. Interior posts were established to ship trade goods like furs.

Later, traders banded together, building flatboats to ship as far south as New Orleans. Flatboats, stable but slow and at the mercy of the currents, used a big "sweep" (as long as the boat sometimes) for a tiller. At the destination, the boat was usually scrapped for other uses and a keelboat, which could be "cordelled" upstream (pulled by ropes, pushed by poles), was bought for the return home. A 2,000-mile round trip took approximately three months.

The first steamboat to ascend the Arkansas River, The Comet, docked at Arkansas Post, at the confluence of the White, Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers in 1820. Two years later The Eagle stopped at Little Rock, then continued upriver nearly to Dwight Mission (now Russellville).

By 1828, Captain Phillip Pennywit, using a lighter ship, The Waverly, established a 30-day schedule between New Orleans and Fort Gibson in present-day Oklahoma, stopping at Arkansas River ports. Three years later (1831) he added White River ports as far north as Batesville.

Although men like Henry Shreve had cleared snags since 1833, and shallow-draft steamboats that "could run anywhere the ground was a little damp" (three inches empty, 24 inches loaded) were typical by the mid-1850s, disastrous accidents involving fires, boiler explosions and snags were accepted risks that too often proved to be reality.

As late as 1872, the Arkansas Gazette newspaper listed 177 steamboats as lost on the river (most were ripped apart by snags). Despite these tragedies, until the 1870s, steamboats shaped the growth of Arkansas.

And then the railroads came. Ironically, the year that railroads began earnest competition with river traffic (1881), the Corps of Engineers established a Little Rock office for river control in an attempt to keep the rivers clear for traffic.

For the next 30 years the railroad and the steamboat competed for Arkansas' transportation business. Towns -- some with more pride than good sense -- bet their fortunes on the outcome. But in the end it was acts of nature and not humans that finally determined the winner.

At first, nature was evenhanded. High water washed out rails; low water scuttled navigation. The flood of 1898 damaged both. But at the turn of the century, nature turned against river traffic. The drought of l90l-02 signaled the end of the steamboat. It was followed by two years of slack water and heavy mud capped by the winter of 1904-05, which saw the Arkansas River frozen over at Little Rock. By 1910 steamboats had cancelled their most profitable route, daily service between Little Rock and Memphis. Fares were higher by rail but were considered more efficient.

Today, Arkansas' rivers are held in tight check by locks and dams. In their wakes are lakes and float streams.