Sidewheel Riverboat War Eagle

War Eagle was a wooden sidewheel riverboat built in Fulton, Ohio, in 1854. She had 46 staterooms, fine velvet carpets, luxurious furniture, and onboard barbershops, and carried mail, package freight, passengers, and troops. During the Civil War, she transported troops and supplies, and her only casualty was a stray bullet that pierced her smokestack in 1862. After the war, she resumed carrying passengers and freight between towns along the Mississippi River, as connections between steamships and trains made ports like La Crosse important transportation hubs for settlers moving west. On the night of May 14, 1870, while docked at the Milwaukee Road Railroad Depot across the river from this point, the ship caught fire when a lantern burst as the carpenter tightened the bands of a leaking barrel of kerosene. The flames spread to the dock, depot, warehouses, and grain elevators; a nearby barge was lost, two steamers were damaged, and seven passengers died in the fire or by drowning while trying to save their belongings. The remains of War Eagle now lie just up the Black River, where the hull structure survives amid wood, metal, and bricks from the burned buildings.

La Crosse, Wisconsin · United States