The Mississippi River has long been a major artery for trade and transportation, carrying Indian canoe travel for thousands of years and later helping rivertowns like Hastings boom by the 1850s as steamboats brought settlers into the region. From the 1850s through the 1870s, steamboats carried most river shipping, bringing settlers, tourists, and goods to Minnesota and transporting grain and flour to markets around the country. Their crews added a rough edge to early Hastings, where saloons, gambling, and fights between rival crews were common. The colorful steamboat era was brief, however, and after the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, trains soon replaced steamboats as the preferred way to move freight and passengers because they traveled faster and year round. Increased railroad traffic through Hastings then drew settlement, industry, and farming to the area. With construction of the lock and dam system in the 1930s, the Mississippi again became an important shipping thoroughfare, and it remains so today.