Steaming Open the Frontier

Steam power first appeared on the Great Lakes in 1818. The earliest steamers were expensive to build and operate. Constructed of wood, the vessels had shallow bottoms and were powered by large sidewheels. For a time, these sidewheelers reigned supreme on the Great Lakes. Large, luxurious vessels met the demands of westward expansion. Sidewheelers carried several hundred passengers, crates of freight, and livestock to frontier communities in the Midwest. On a single day in 1838, a fleet of sidewheelers carried 5,000 people from Buffalo to the western Great Lakes. Sidewheelers remained popular for the passenger trade into the early decades of the twentieth century, but they faced tough competition against the propeller in every other trade.

Alpena, Michigan · United States