Entries - Entry Category: Water - Starting with A

The Arkadelphia City was a Ouachita River steamboat that suffered a disastrous boiler explosion on April 25, 1863, that killed six people. The Arkadelphia City was a fifty-three-ton sternwheel paddleboat built by Tennison, Britton & Carpenter at New Albany, Indiana, in 1859 for the Arkadelphia Home Packet Company, using machinery salvaged from the steamer Joe Jakes. Owned by Captain T. R. Tennyson and Captain M. S. Carpenter, the vessel “was run regularly on the Ouachita River” under the command of Captain W. A. Britton. On April 25, 1863, the Arkadelphia City was steaming on the Ouachita River near DeCeipher Shoals about twelve miles below Arkadelphia (Clark County) when it was “blown to pieces…by the bursting of her boilers.” The vessel’s …

The Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum (AIMM) in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) is home to Arkansas’s only historic naval vessel open to the public for tours, the USS Razorback (SS 394). It also includes a U.S. Navy tugboat, the USS Hoga. The museum also offers a small research library and a number of permanent and rotating exhibits on submarines and naval history. Hearing of the Razorback’s approaching decommission, a group of submarine veterans initiated an effort to return the submarine to the United States. They approached Mayor Patrick Henry Hays of North Little Rock in 2002 about the possibility of docking the Razorback in Arkansas. At that time, the city was already working to acquire the Hoga, a tugboat present at …

The Arkansas River originates high in the Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains near Leadville, Colorado, and it ends in eastern Arkansas at the confluence with the Mississippi River where the town of Napoleon (Desha County) once stood. The river is 1,460 miles long and flows across three states before making its way into Arkansas. The Arkansas River is the second-longest tributary in the Mississippi-Missouri river system, the sixth-longest river in the United States, and the forty-fifth-longest river in the world. Three major cities are situated along the banks of this river that drains nearly 160,500 square miles of land: Wichita, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Little Rock (Pulaski County). Significance to Arkansas The Arkansas River, flowing east and southeast across …

The Arkansas Traveler was a steamboat that sank after hitting a snag in the Arkansas River below Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) on March 21, 1860, killing a passenger. The Arkansas Traveler was a 170-ton sternwheel paddleboat built in 1856 in New Albany, Indiana. Owned by Captain Albert Thomas, who ran the vessel, and Captain James Timms (or Timmons), the steamboat regularly carried passengers and cargo between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Fort Smith (Sebastian County). The steamboat was heading up the Arkansas River on the night of March 21, 1860, carrying a cargo “said to be the largest ever taken from New Orleans into Arkansas river,” including 200 barrels of sugar and 800 sacks of salt, when it struck a snag …

The Arkansas Waterways Commission was established by Act 242 of 1967, and its powers and duties were amended by Act 414 of 1973. It became a division of the Arkansas Department of Commerce in 2019. The mission of the Arkansas Waterways Commission is to develop, promote, and protect the commercially navigable waterways of Arkansas for waterborne transportation and to promote economic development to benefit the people of Arkansas. The navigable waterways in Arkansas include the Arkansas, Mississippi, White, Red, and Ouachita rivers. The Arkansas Waterways Commission is composed of seven commissioners appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of the Arkansas Senate. Each commissioner serves a seven-year term. Five of the commissioners represent five navigable stream basin areas …

At least twenty nineteenth-century steamboats were called Arkansas or a derivative of the state’s name, according to information in the Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and Way’s Packet Directory. One of these steamboats famously sank on state waters in 1844. The earliest known Arkansas was a sidewheel steamboat built in 1818. Little is known about it, but the Arkansas Gazette wrote about it on December 29, 1821, in an article about four companies of the U.S. Seventh Infantry passing by on the steamboat Courier, adding that “the remaining two companies were detained at Grand Point in consequence of the steam-boat Arkansas, on board of which they had been embarked, having burst a …