Robert Gudmestad

You have the larger steamboats on the Mississippi River, but then you have a lot of smaller steamboats on the tributary rivers, ones that would have a draft of maybe one or two feet.

And, of course, steamboats are at the mercy of the environment because if there's not enough water, they can't run.

But if there is enough water, you have this amazing network where you could go –

to Montana.

You could go to Oklahoma.

You could go to Pittsburgh.

You could go to St.

Paul, Minnesota and New Orleans.

And almost anywhere in between, that was along a river.

Yes.

And so you've got people both going upstream and downstream, and you have cargo going upstream and downstream.

And so you're getting kind of this sense of

interconnectedness that you didn't have before.

Because with a flat boat, if you say you were going to go from Cincinnati to New Orleans, which was not uncommon, you build the flat boat, you put your product on it, you'd float down.

When you got to New Orleans, you'd sell your product, you'd break up the flat boat for scrap, and then you'd walk back.

Or maybe you'd buy a horse and you'd go back.

But now with the steamboat,

You can go from New Orleans to Cincinnati

In a matter of days.

Even shorter than that.