The steamboat TELL CITY was built in 1889 and named for Tell City, Indiana. She carried passengers and freight on the Ohio River until she sank after an accident at Little Hocking, Ohio, on April 6, 1917. The pilothouse was removed from the wreck and served as a summer house on the riverfront lawn of the Bent family in Little Hocking. Mrs. Cora Bent later presented the pilothouse to the Ohio Historical Society for inclusion in the historic displays of the Ohio River Museum in Marietta. It is the oldest surviving pilothouse of the sort that Mark Twain knew well and wrote about, and it was restored to its original condition in 1977 by the J. Mack Gamble Fund of Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen.