Peaking just above the muddy waters of the Missouri River near Vermillion, South Dakota, are the skeletal remains of a steamboat’s hull.
The North Alabama went down in 1870, but it reemerged due to the river’s low level this summer.
“It’s exposed the backbone of the ship,” said Tom Downs, the Missouri National Recreational River’s chief of interpretation, education and outreach. “Many decades later, we’re reminded of the history when the water goes down.”
It’s one of the many historical treasures that drought is revealing across the Great Plains and elsewhere around the world. In central Texas, dry conditions recently uncovered dinosaur tracks from 113 million years ago. Low river levels have exposed Nazi warships and bombs in Serbia and Buddhist statues in China.
Midwestern shipwreck
The North Alabama’s history is perhaps less dramatic than footprints of prehistoric creatures or remnants of war, but it gives a glimpse into a time when steamboats dominated American rivers.
The Missouri River was like a highway before steamboat traffic died down in favor of railroads and barges. Between 1819 and 1895, more than 400 steamboats sank on the river. Most of the shipwrecks were swept away by shifting sandbars and currents, and very few are still visible.
“So the North Alabama really is a relic,” Downs said.
The steamboat was taking winter supplies to military outposts in October 1870 when a log tore a large gash through its bottom.
It’s believed no one was injured and everything was salvaged from the boat – except for its hull, which occasionally rises above the waterline during dry periods, including droughts in 2004, the 1930s and 1906.
“A lot of people pretty much forget about it between droughts,” Downs said. “But when water levels drop and it emerges, people take notice.”
Something that’s also exposed by low water levels? The log that snagged the North Alabama and took it down 150 years ago. It sits right in front of the shipwreck.
Climbing on the ruins or taking souvenirs is forbidden, but the parks service encourages visitors to approach and take pictures of the wreck, which generates interest when it surfaces.
“I think it stirs the imagination to think about a day when steamboat travel was the ticket,” Downs said. “That’s how you got up and down the river. There was a time when people actually rode on these boats and traveled hundreds of miles to get to forts and other places to deliver goods.”
Abandoned towns
