We went to Kansas City, Missouri to see my son this winter and he suggested a museum, which I thought would be ok, but it was FANTASTIC! A real must-do if you are ever in the area! The Steamship Arabia was a boat which caught on a “snag, a thick trunk of a huge, fallen walnut tree,” in the Missouri River and sank in1856, with over 200 tons of winter supplies set for delivery to the western frontier! All 130 people aboard were rescued except for a mule. (All quotes are from the Arabia Steamboat Museum website).

“Using a metal detector, weathered maps, and old newspaper clippings to guide the search, David Hawley located the wreck in July 1987. Years of erosion and shifting sand left the lost paddleboat 45 feet underground and a half-mile from the present channel of the Missouri River” in a farmers field. Much effort and lots of money later, they were able to discover the riches this boat contained, like a well preserved time capsule. Even food was preserved and edible!

“David, along with his father Bob, brother Greg, and family friends Jerry Mackey and David Luttrell, would soon return to the farm and begin an adventure consuming the next 20 years. The excavation resulted in the discovery of the largest collection of pre-Civil War artifacts in the world.” The museum goes into great detail about the very elaborate excavation process.

They decided to keep the collection intact and had to go back to the bank to borrow more money to renovate a building to house the museum. Not one item from the collection has ever been sold!

To me, this museum exhibits the “can do” spirit our country was founded on. These people weren’t wealthy, but they believed in an idea, had a vision, and pursued it unfailingly!

“Visitors can stop by the working preservation lab to learn how materials are cleaned and preserved. This painstaking process will take perhaps an additional 15 years to complete. To stabilize the items yet to be preserved, they are frozen in blocks of ice,” see below. I’m going to let the photos speak for themselves, all taken with my phone because I didn’t bring my camera!

The original paddlewheel on a replicated deck the same size as that of the Steamboat Arabia.