Snag boats mitigated loss of life and property in rivers
As American settlers pushed westward following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, their goals of settlement, civilization and trade were hindered by the hazardous nature of the western rivers. The pioneers found the Mississippi River and its tributaries, such as the Arkansas and Red rivers, filled with obstacles and debris. Snag boats, tasked with the removal of sunken trees and the clearing of the rivers, were one of the first answers to the growing loss of life and property. The navigability of the rivers became a priority to settlers, who believed the future prosperity of the Lower Mississippi Valley and the western frontier, including Arkansas, was acutely tied to the safety of river trade.
As western river trade became more important to the growing nation, people began calling for large-scale river improvement. By 1824, the federal government instituted a $1,000 bounty on successful river improvement practices. Learning about the bounty, experienced boatman Henry Miller Shreve put forth his idea for a steam-powered vessel designed for the sole purpose of removing sunken trees, or snags, from the western rivers. Completed in 1829, the Heliopolis quickly steamed to one of the most dangerous stretches of the Mississippi River: Plum Point. Owing to the sharpness of the bend in the Mississippi’s course, Plum Point was constantly filled with numerous boat-wrecking snags. In two days, the Heliopolis cleared the entire stretch of river.
Instead of relying on manpower to lift the sometimes 70-ton trees from the rivers, Shreve, who had been appointed superintendent of Western River improvements in 1827, used the pioneering mechanical power of steam to make short work of river blockages. The key component of a snag boat was a stout iron beam positioned between two heavy wooden hulls at the front of the boat. Once the crew located a snag, the boat was aimed at the tree and steamed at full power directly toward it. The beam, instead of the hull, caught the snag and caused it to either snap off cleanly below the water line or loosen from the mud, making extraction with the boat’s large iron winch possible. By putting the whole weight and momentum of the boat forward, a process that normally took a work crew several hours to accomplish, could be completed in under 45 minutes.
After accomplishing major clearances on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and adding a second boat to the government roster, Shreve turned his flotilla toward the muddy and temperamental Arkansas River. Arriving in July 1833, Shreve found the Arkansas River at a stage much too high for snag boats to operate. When Shreve returned a month later to check on the state of the river, he was surprised to see that the Arkansas had dropped too low for work to begin. These few months of attempted work and frustration established a pattern of snag boat operation on the Arkansas for the next few decades. Shreve returned in the winter of 1834, thus avoiding the summer drought, to begin work.
Like other inland rivers, the Arkansas was subject to “cave-ins.” During spring rains, runoff from fields into the rivers caused large chunks of soil along the riverbanks to fall into the streams, carrying saplings and even large trees along. Over time, this resulted in logjams that made navigation difficult, if not impossible. Shreve supplied two snag boats, three machine boats, and a steamboat. He made it from Pine Bluff to Little Rock by Feb. 22, 1834, and then did additional clearing above the capital city. In all, workers cleared 4,907 obstructions from the Arkansas. By some accounts, this averaged one snag every 88 yards.
Despite the accomplishments of Shreve’s boats in 1834, the snag boats could not maintain work on the Arkansas due to other improvement projects going on in the western rivers, especially the removal of the Red River Raft (a massive logjam that clogged the lower part of the river), and a continual scarcity of funding for river improvement. Between 1834 and 1844, U.S. government snag boats entered the Arkansas only a few times. The snag boats sometimes accomplished a great deal of work but, more often, found the tumultuous river either too high or too low. By 1844, years of decreasing funding and the eventual sale of four government snag boats weakened the capacity to maintain the gains that had been achieved. Improvement of the Arkansas River slowly dwindled with the arrival of the railroad as an alternative to river transport coupled with fears over decreasing funding. Under the banner of flood control, river improvement programs would not reappear on the Arkansas until after the Civil War.
— Colton Michael Adkisson (with some information from a separate entry by Janet G. Brantley)
This story is adapted by Guy Lancaster from the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System. Visit the site at encyclopediaofarkansas.net.