Our Past Is Present September 18, 2017

September 18, 2017

            This is “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.

            Gaylynn Childs, our retired Executive Director, shared this story in a 2008 broadcast in recognition of the 150 anniversary of the founding of Junction City.     

            “To most who are relatively recent residents of this area, the idea that steamboats once piled the rivers of Kansas is hard to imagine.  But indeed they did and they played a significant role in the early settlement of this region.  Sonie Liebler, a “Steamboat buff” and a former resident of Junction City, has researched and documented this riverboat era in local history and she writes that between 1854 and 1866, over 20 steamers plied the Kaw River.  “In those days, rivers were the natural road ways on which settlers and cargo were carried west as the frontier opened up for settlement.  The Kansas River was no different from other tributaries of the Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.  Traveling the river was not easy, but it could and was done by perseverance and river smart men who knew their business.” 

            The three stern-wheelers that carried trade to Fort Riley were: The Excel, which made six trips during June of 1854; the Financier No. 2 that made two trips in 1855 and one unloaded at Fort Riley then continued up the Republican River as far as present day Clay Center.   The third was the Colonel Gus Linn, which made six trips during the flood year of 1859.  The Colonel Gus Linn was perhaps the most successful steamer on the Kaw, carrying a cargo of Commissary supplies, building materials and passengers to the Fort and returning with corn, hides, produce and passengers to Kansas City. 

            The fluctuations of the river boaters dictated the success and frequency of riverboat travel on the Kaw River until the start of the Civil War.  The railroad also brought an end to the era of the riverboats in Kansas.”