Generations of school children in Marietta have learned how in 1788, 48 men floated down the Ohio River aboard the flatboat called the Adventure Galley to start the city of Marietta. These founders of Marietta were neither the first nor by no means the last group of people to use the popular and simple form of transportation to get down the river on their way west. The one-way crafts moved an incredible amount of people, livestock, and goods down the river.

The story of flatboats on the Ohio River started long before 1788 and their legacy continues today in the form of the giant steel barges that pass Marietta every day. The concept of the early flatboat was simple. Using the abundant wood from a nearby forest, a large flat bottom boat could be constructed. The simplest of these would have a covered area to protect goods and passengers and an open area where livestock would ride. The boat would move downriver with the current, being steered with a long paddle-like rudder from the top of the roof of the enclosed cabin.

In 1782 a farmer from Reading, Pa., named Jacob Yoder came up with an idea to use the flatboat to make a tidy profit. He had one constructed for about $75 at a boatyard near current day Brownsville, Pa. He spent three months floating down the rivers to New Orleans with a load of Beaver pelts. He then shipped them to Baltimore and made a profit of $2,000. Scores of others quickly adopted his business plan. The flatboat era of travel had begun.

The soldiers at Fort Harmar counted the numbers of boats passing the mouth of the Muskingum between October 1786 and May 1787. Some 127 boats, 2,689 people, more than 1,000 horses, 756 head of cattle and 192 wagons floated by, and this was all before Rufus Putnam and his group came down in 1788. River traffic increased yearly, with as many as a dozen flat boats per day floating past Marietta.

There were some flatboats constructed around Marietta. George Sanford Corner ran Clay Banks Mills along the Little Muskingum near Reno. He established Cornerville and built flatboats for himself and others.

Flatboats served many purposes. Many of them were moving people and their belongings down the river to start a new life. The river was flooded with people moving to the frontier to set up home in newly opened lands. On board the crafts would be their family, whatever farm animals they had, as well as supplies they would need to get started. When they reached their destination, the family would carefully take the boat apart and use the wood to construct their first cabin on land. Millions moved west by using the rivers as their primary transportation method. Frequently several families would tie their boats together as they floated down on their ark-like crafts.

The other main use for the flatboat was to move goods to market. It was cheaper to send items down river to New Orleans than to try to send them overland to the major cities in the east. Goods were frequently transferred to large boats as things moved down the river system. Cottage industries sprung up to provide services for all these boats floating downriver. Traveling Bible salesmen, whiskey boats, boats with fire supplies, even floating brothels were not uncommon.

Since flatboats were primarily one-way crafts, those that piloted them either had to stay where they ended up or find a way home. Many simply walked back to where they started, a hike that could take months. The railroad and steamboats made it easier to get back, but it also spelled the beginning of the end of the flatboat era. Those that ran steamboats quickly figured out that they could purchase the flatboats at the southern end of the one-way trip, tie it to the steamboat and bring it back north with them loaded with a different cargo needed in the north. The flatboat era quickly became the start of the barge era. The modern steel barges that pass by Marietta owe their start to the flatboat.

George Corner made many trips down river from Marietta to New Orleans taking goods down the river system. His letters home detailed many of his trips. The passage through the Falls of the Ohio was a challenge for him and all flatboaters, he noted in his letters the dates on which he made it past the difficult stretch of water. He entered the business after steamboats started on the rivers, his return upriver made easier by buying passage on them. A trip aboard the Belle of the West cost him $6 when he took it from New Orleans to Cincinnati in 1849. The sternwheeler made regular trips between the two cities until it burned near Florence, Ind., in 1850. Corner’s letters have been passed down through generations. His great granddaughter, Judith Corner Piersall, wrote of his travels in a recent issue of The Tallow Light.

A modern explorer named Rinker Buck got a contemporary perspective of what it was like to travel by flatboat when he built his own version of one and floated 2,000 miles from Elizabeth, Pa., to New Orleans. His 2022 book, “Life on the Mississippi” is a modern look at the journey so many took before.

When I was on the crew team at Marietta High School in the late 1970s, we had a riverside view of Marietta’s attempt at a modern version of an old flatboat. The flatboat that you see today between the River Trail and the Ohio River Museum was constructed to be a floating exhibit like the W.P Snyder Jr. The trouble was that it kept sinking. A photo that I took as a teenager of it floating appears on page 2 today. After someone hung a sign on it that said “Early American Submarine” it became a permanent land-based display. The only time it is surrounded by water now is during a flood. Even on land it gives residents and visitors to the city a good idea on how those that came to the “west” first traveled.

Art Smith is the online manager of The Marietta Times. He can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com