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In 1849, a steamship named after President James Monroe headed from St. Louis to Council Bluffs, Iowa. The passengers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Philadelphia. At St. Louis, they were joined with a group of California gold diggers from Jeffersonville, Indiana. But their trip was interrupted when cholera broke out on board. Local fourteen-year-old James McHenry discovered the steamship after it landed at Jefferson City and observed the dead and dying victims along the riverbank. Author Gary Elliott details the history of the outbreak in the city and its far-reaching effects.

During the nineteenth century, more than three hundred boats met their end in the steamboat graveyard that was the Lower Missouri River, from Omaha to its mouth.   Although derided as little more than an “orderly pile of kindling,” steamboats were, in fact, technological marvels superbly adapted to the river’s conditions. Their light superstructure and long, wide, flat hulls powered by high-pressure engines drew so little water that they could cruise on “a heavy dew” even when fully loaded. But these same characteristics made them susceptible to fires, explosions and snags—tree trunks ripped from the banks, hiding under the water’s surface. Authors Vicki and James Erwin detail the perils that steamboats, their passengers and crews faced on every voyage.

The 1928 explosion that transformed a West Plains dance hall into a raging inferno sparked feverish national media attention and decades of bitterness in the Missouri town it tore apart. And while the story inspired a popular country song, the firestorm that claimed thirty-nine lives remains an unsolved mystery. In this first book on the notorious catastrophe, Lin Waterhouse presents a clear account of the event and its aftermath that judiciously weighs conflicting testimony and deeply respects the personal anguish experienced by parents forced to identify their children by their clothing and personal trinkets.