Transportation
Bertrand was a shallow-draft American steamboat launched in 1864 at Wheeling, West Virginia, to serve the difficult Missouri River trade to Montana’s booming mining settlements. On April 1, 1865, while carrying a large cargo of food, clothing, tools, household goods, mining supplies, and luxury items to Virginia City, it struck a submerged log at Desoto Bend and sank in less than ten minutes; no one died, but nearly all of the cargo was lost. Found in 1968 at DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, the wreck yielded hundreds of thousands of well-preserved artifacts, making it an exceptional record of frontier commerce, everyday life, and westward expansion at the end of the Civil War.
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Nebraska · United States
