Cassville's first ferry, a 40-foot rowboat, crossed the Mississippi River in 1833. In 1836, it carried a 23-year-old New Yorker, Nelson Dewey, to Cassville, where he had been drawn by the town's promise as a possible capital of the Wisconsin Territory. Twelve years later, in 1848, Wisconsin became a state and Dewey became its first governor. By 1858, after returning to Cassville, he purchased a new ferry powered by two horses walking on tread mills. In the 1890s, the horse-powered ferry carried sweet corn, peas, and cabbage from Iowa's fertile farmlands to the Klindt Geiger Canning Company cannery in Cassville. The ferry was modernized with a gasoline engine in 1913, and in 1918 the original wooden ferry was replaced by a 25-ton steel-hulled vessel that carried six automobiles. In 1924, during its eight-month operating season, it carried 2,238 automobiles and 17,456 passengers across the Mississippi. Ferry service in Cassville was interrupted in 1940 when locks and dams were built on the river, but local memories of the ferry endured, and in 1988 a regular route from Cassville to Turkey River, Iowa, was restored.