The 1819 "Matron Head" large cent - about 11⁄8 inch in diameter Worth about 90 cents in today's money |
I am in a room with maybe 6 or 8 other people. Most people are sitting in chairs. It's not crowded, everyone has plenty of room. People are conversing. There is one guy standing up by a table and he tells us that he is a successful bank robber and to further his point he picks up a leather sack the size of a football and starts pouring out large, old, tarnished copper coins the size of half dollars. He has a pile of them for sure, but if they are copper they can't be worth much, except I've never seen any coins like that, at least not US coins. Whatever. He has some loot and he's not in jail, so I guess that counts as success.
Conversation goes on and my wife mentions that she has seen steamships in Missouri, and then the dream kind of fades away.
Lewis & Clark took the Missouri River on their Journey West |
Steamships in Missouri seems kind of odd, but there is a port in Tulsa, and the Missouri River runs right through the center of Missouri from St. Louis to Kansas City, so maybe.
A towboat with barges on the Missouri River near Atchison, Kansas |
There is barge traffic on the Missouri River, but it isn't deep enough for ocean going ships at least not current ships. I think the Columbia River here in Portland is kept dredged to a depth of 40 feet which isn't a whole lot deeper than the 9 meter depth of the Missouri.
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