Upper Minnesota River Transportation - Minnesota Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

This marker stands in Riverside Park adjacent to Front Street in New Ulm. The text reads:

“Upper Minnesota River Transportation”

The first river steamboat, “West Newton,” passed by here in 1853 going upriver with troops to lay out the site of Fort Ridgely. Two days later “Tiger” and “Clarion” followed with men and supplies.

For the next twenty years boats brought settlers, soldiers, freight, Indian supplies and gold to the area; the boat landing near this site was very important to New Ulm, settled in 1855.

Boats varied in size, characteristics and significance. “Wave” had a melodious bell; “Time and Tide” and “Jeanette Roberts” arrived early in spring; “Frank Steele” was ‘old friend’ because of the many German settlers it brought to the county. “New Ulm Belle” was protected by government issued ammunition in 1862 during Indian warfare. In 1867 “Chippewa” unloaded the first threshing machines at New Ulm. In 1870 “Dexter” loaded 24,000 bushels of wheat and transported it to St. Louis, and the “Hudson,” owned by Winona St. Peter Railroad, largest boat landing here, loaded 15,000 bushels of wheat in 1871.

The “Otter” made 22 trips to New Ulm in 1865 and brought in over a million pounds of supplies and lumber, and loaded over four million pounds (butter, hides, earthenware and 30,000 bushels of wheat, barley and oats). Rebuilt as a freight barge in 1872 when the railroad reached the county, the “Otter” was stranded and abandoned above New Ulm in 1878, and the last boat was gone forever from the river.

The marker was sponsored by the Brown County Historical Society and Victor P. Reim in 1970.

Marker Type:: City

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