Old times on the upper Mississippi

the long version

The ‘Upper Mississippi’ is defined in Wikipedia as the portion north of Cairo, IL, where the Ohio meets the Mississippi, but for this steamboat captain, the southern-most port on the Upper Mississippi seems to have been St. Louis. The northern port was in the vicinity of St. Paul; 800 miles by river. There are a number of photos of steamships, and of some of the locations featured in the text. In the appendix is a list of all the steamboats that traveled the Upper Mississippi from 1823-1863.