Robert Fulton
This is a replica of the original New Orleans built in 1911 to celebrate the first steamboat down the Ohio and Mississippi.
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Early Steamboats
Soon after Robert Fulton, a steamboat
designer and entrepreneur, successfully sailed his
steamer, the Clermont, up the Hudson River in 1807 he began to
consider using steamboats on the Mississippi. He and his partner
Edward Livingston were able to secure an eighteen year monopoly
from the territory of Orleans (soon to become Louisiana in 1812)
that would only allow their steamboats in the mouth of the Mississippi.
Steamboat technology was already more than twenty years old, but
no one had yet incorporated it into a successful commercial venture.
The Fulton-Livingston collaboration would be the first. In 1809
they sent Nicholas Roosevelt and his wife Lydia to explore the
Ohio and Mississippi Rivers for the possible use of steamboats.
After determining that it was feasible Fulton made plans for the
construction of a steamboat that would be the first to venture
onto these western rivers.
The boat, the New Orleans, was 148 feet long, 32 feet wide, with
a twelve foot draft. It was built in Pittsburgh in 1811.