When Steamboats Sailed, Cotton Was King and the Coosa Was Our Highway. Exploring The Steamboat Era.
I love history and learning about the past. I want you to take a little walk with me. Head down towards the Robert Redden Foot Bridge, also known as the flag bridge, feel that gentle breeze coming off the water, and just imagine. Block out the sounds of today’s traffic and instead, listen for the deep, rhythmic churn of a paddlewheel and the sharp blast of a steam whistle echoing where the Etowah and Oostanaula rivers meet.
Because right here, where the Coosa River is born, was once the roaring heart of a whole era. Long before endless highways and railways crisscrossed our landscape, these rivers were our interstates, and the magnificent steam engine ships were the lifeblood of Rome. We are going to take a look at the transportation and trade on the Coosa River, focusing on the incredible engineering and daring individuals who navigated this era’s vital commerce.
Our city saw its first steamboat arrive way back in 1836, kicking off a century of thriving river trade. And the undisputed king of that trade? Cotton.
You see, Rome was perfectly positioned. The fertile fields of Northwest Georgia produced mountains of “white gold,” and our city became the critical hub for getting it to the world. The area we still call the “Cotton Block”, right at the south end of Broad Street, was a dizzying scene of activity with bales of cotton stacked high on the wharves.
And it wasn’t just the cargo that made this scene so special. It was the people. The riverfront was teeming with seasoned captains, gruff deckhands, and all sorts of colorful characters. In fact, local legend holds that it was these very events and hardy individuals on the Coosa River that inspired the stories and comics of Popeye the Sailor! Can’t you just picture a tough-as-nails riverboat worker, maybe with a squint in his eye and a corncob pipe? The stories of these riverboat workers’ adventures caught the imagination of E. C. Segar, the creator of the comic Popeye the Sailor. It’s another amazing layer to our city’s story!
Vessels with proud names like The Magnolia and The Dixie were a common sight, chugging their way down the Coosa towards Gadsden, Alabama. In a single season, these workhorses could transport tens of thousands of bales of cotton from our docks. They didn’t just carry cargo, they carried mail, passengers, and the very ambitions of our growing city.
All up and down the Coosa River were stops where steamboats would pick up loads. While on the page this seems like a glamorous job, it was actually very dangerous. Half of all steamboats in the United States either caught fire or exploded, causing hundreds of deaths during their time. This probably led to the toughest of the tough to man these vessels. The era of the steamboat lasted from the early 1800s until the 1870s.
Of course, that era couldn’t last forever. The rise of the railroads in the late 19th and early 20th centuries offered a faster, more direct route for trade, and the age of the riverboat began to fade. By the 1940s, the commercial steam whistles had largely fallen silent on the Coosa.
The next time you’re enjoying a concert at the Town Green, kayaking down the river, or taking a tour on the Roman Holiday, take a moment to look at the water. That river tells a story of incredible industry, of a time when Rome’s fortunes rose and fell with the water levels, and when the whole world wanted the cotton, and perhaps the characters, that sailed from our shores. The echoes of the steam engine era are still here, flowing right through the heart of our town.
Read our post on the Historical Tour Of Broad Street for more historical markers in Rome, Georgia. Broad Street is one of the most popular places people go “When In Rome, Georgia.” It has the best collection of food, shopping, and entertainment venues in and around Rome. You may not know how a Broad Street tour reveals our rich local history. If you start at one end of Broad Street and stroll to the other end, you will find some fantastic stories and the history of our town.
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