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Packets to Paradise
Steamboating to Fort Benton
John G. Lepley
Soft Cover $19.95
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The boats that plied the Upper Missouri and the men who piloted
them were a breed unto themselves. Missouri River packets
were especially built to survive the river's innumerable hazards
and to deliver their freight and passengers safely to the
Montana Frontier. The Missouri swallowed many; around
every bend was another sang or bar that could dispatch the
fragile boats to a watery grave. The 2385 miles from St.
Louis were a grueling two-months trip. Only the most
fearless pilots were willing to attempt the journey, guiding the
sidewheelers and sternwheelers containing travelers and
thousands of dollars in cargo to the "World's Innermost
Port." Montana's steamboat era lasted only thirty
hears, from 1860 to 1890, but it was one of the most exciting
and romantic chapters in America's Westward expansion.
Heroes larger than life were scattered throughout those years.
For nearly every family living in the Northwest, there is
probably a page in their history describing a descendant who
arrived at the Fort Benton levee aboard a Missouri River
steamboat. Donald Jackson aptly characterized these boats
as "an engine of Manifest Destiny that seemed always to be
on the cutting edge of one frontier or another."
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