Robert Gudmestad

Yeah.

They were extraordinarily effective because shipping insurance rates were

after the federal government went in and got rid of these snag fields.

And in fact, the biggest snag field, it was a dam, which at that time they called a raft.

So it was in the Red River, and it was by present-day Shreveport, hence the name of Shreveport.

So Shreve went there, and the dam was thick enough where it had silted together and new trees were growing out of it, and you could ride a horse across this dam.

Shreve went in there, pulled this dam apart, and now the river is free.

And that's why you have Shreveport established in Louisiana.

There you go.

So the last thing is having these snags removed on the Mississippi River and tributaries.

Now you can travel at night because you're pretty well assured that there's not going to be a snag.

Of course, you had to be on the lookout for sandbars.

These boats caught fire at an alarming rate.

They broke down as well.

And things could follow paddle wheels and that kind of thing.

Well, I'm going to use the R word, railroads.

Uh-oh.

Yes.

So in the 1840s and the 1850s, for the most part, when you built a railroad near the Western Rivers, it was a short railroad that was designed to get products to a steamboat landing.

But in the mid to late 1850s, you have a tremendous railroad boom that's going on in the United States.