This small town lies on the southern bank of the Missouri river some 81 miles above the confluence of that great stream with the Mississippi. It’s a picturesque place built on the bluffs and hills and extending back from the river and intermingling with the rich farm lands that surround the community.
Peopled by industrious, hard working folks of mostly German descent, this area has prospered by the applied efforts of their hands.
Mostly agricultural, at first glance the entire area has a well tended and carefully maintained air about it. But it is also a vibrant community, with excellent schools and friendly merchants and congenial, hardworking people. Even a talented and growing artistic culture is ingrained into this little town.
It’s past is gone now and the grand riverboats that were it’s first reason for being are gone as well. The trains fly through without stopping. Industries that sustained it in the past, hat and tent factories, a large flour mill and what was once the largest nursery in the country have come and gone and are replaced by ever newer industries.
But the first business conducted here was that of a simple woodlot. To fuel the boats that plied the as yet untamed Missouri river.
At that time, it was called simply ‘Miller’s Landing’. After the industrious man who sold cord wood to the pilots of those river vessels.
In the early part of the 19th century, the heavily forested hills stretched right down to the waters edge. No real roads other than dirt tracks connected it at first to the area around. And no rails carried trains along the riverbank. Miller’s Landing was an isolated outpost in the center of an American nation that at that time still barely existed west of the riverport of St. Louis.
But small communities were widely scattered along the river upstream and down and all needed the supplies that could only come from the east. And the boats that carried those supplies had a ravenous appetite for the cordwood Mr. Miller supplied.
Even a smallish boat would consume as much as ten cords a day. And the largest could burn three times that as they fought their way past snags and sand bars and sawyers and currents trying again to conquer the river with each new passage.
I’ve found no description of what those first labors might have been like providing feed to the fuel bunkers of the boats. But having grown up on a farm in the area, I here propose to use my own imagination to paint a picture with words of this community as it once might have been. A picture constructed without historical verification, and with only what I perceive it might have been.
Now a cord of wood is a stack four feet wide and four feet high and eight feet long. In today’s world it sells for about $35 to $75 dollars depending on the local markets. $35 dollars today would have equaled about $1.70 in 1835 so at least ten times that is what it might have cost in fuel alone to operate one of the smaller boats of the day. Or about $17.00 a day, a somewhat considerable sum in the 1830’s. Not only was the cost of the wood a burden on the operators but a full load of such fuel could easily consume half the deck space that might be needed for saleable supplies.
And the supplies of the day were nothing like what you see on store shelves today. Basics were what was needed by the new farms and villages to the west. Nails and horse shoes were not loaded on the boats for trade or sale. Small iron ingots from mines and mills on the Meramec river were delivered to the blacksmiths of the day and pounded into whatever items and tools were needed. Hardware was what was needed to the west. Cloth and glass and manufactured goods were expensive and rare commodities delivered via the river.
The only foodstuffs carried were the luxuries that could not be grown or raised locally. Hams and steaks and vegetables the pioneers could produce.
Coffee and salt, sugar and the ever valuable whiskey were, for the most part, imported from the east and the south until the industrious locals could contrive to manufacture their own. Wheels were carried on the boats for wagons built on site, until carriage makers arrived. Gun powder and lead from the mines and mills in southeastern Missouri was brought north to the river and loaded on the westbound steamers.
All of these products relied on the boats and the boats relied on the woodlots such as Philip Miller’s on the riverbank where New Haven sits today.
The boats came and went and needed seasoned wood for their boilers so it must have been cut and stacked and cured far ahead of use. Only so much green wood could be burned and still produce the heat to boil the water to power the basic steam engines of the day.
The trees would have been felled with double cut saws as one would imagine the lumberjacks of the north would use. Limbs were trimmed with axes and cut to length again with the saws. The trunks would be skidded to the woodlot by slow powerful teams of oxen and the trimmed limbs hauled in on the crude oxcarts of the day. Additional labor was of course required to tend these animals. Nothing was either fast or easy.
The trunks would have to be split with wedges and hammers most likely made on site by Miller’s own smith. And then sawed to a useable length by saws kept sharp, again by the busy blacksmith.
Mr. Miller had a huge family but would have required the help of hired crews or contractors to maintain his supply. These men would have stacked the level area that is now downtown New Haven full of ranks of wood and just the labor needed to load the boats would seem daunting to us today.
Was it passed hand to hand like a bucket line aboard the boats? Were two gangways employed to enter and exit the boats in a circle? Or was it hoisted aboard with steam powered capstains and then stacked by hand? These are questions I cannot answer though none seem easy to me.
In many areas men who owned slaves often hired them out when they had free time to load wood onto the boats. I do not know how many slaves were in this area but I do know the german heritage would lend one to believe the slave population might have been small.
These immigrants remembered too only well the servitude of the feudal system they had left Europe to escape. For that reason alone the majority of the settlers to this area prefered to rely on their own labor and not the toil of slaves. That type of sterling self reliance is evident even today as a hallmark of the community.
Gardens and livestock, in my imagination, would have been tended by the wives and children of the busy woodcutters and teamsters. Free time would have been slim and valued by all. Fishing lines would line the riverbank above and below the woodlot and been checked daily. The odd hours might have been consumed in the pursuit of small game to supplement the standard table fare. And Missouri river catfish would have been a delicacy.
The small creeks and streams in the area would have been trapped for the occasional pelt. And the hearths and fires of the work force would have been fueled by that wood too small to feed to the boats.
The clearcut areas, I envision would have rapidly become fields for corn and pastures for cattle as the area moved steadily toward an agricultural economy. And the export of feed and cured meats might have soon added to the boat’s cargo on their downstream runs. St. Louis was a hungry and growing town.
Within only a couple of generations the easily accessible wood would have been gone. But so too was the heyday of the boats on the river. They continued to steam up and down the river but in ever decreasing numbers after the railroad arrived in the 1850’s and the railroads soon moved beyond the use of wood and utilized coal as a more efficient fuel. And coal as well, became another product to deliver to these now developing industrial communities along the river.
And that brings us to the community of today. Passing through on Highway 100 one sees little of the town. The often seen quick shops and groceries, cafes and and bars line the highway in a typical midwestern spread out sort of fashion. Newer Industry and shops are there as well.
But unless one takes the narrower town streets and heads north toward the river, the origins and history of the town are missed. The older architecture and flavor of the community is overlooked.
The beauty of the town remains hidden. And the charming natures of the citizens are missed if only you stop for gas.
The little valley where Olive street now runs on the west side of town was once filled with stockyards. The remains of the old mill also on the west end of the downtown area was once one of the largest flour mills in the country and at one time housed as well, an immense stationary diesel engine that provided electricity to power the whole town.
A cemetery on the bluff to the east of the old town is reputed by some to be the final resting place of the original mountain man, John Colter, a valued member of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
A restored hotel and charming B&Bs, artisans, a theater and even a distillery occupy the older town nearer the river where once the ranks of wood once were stacked.
An access for boaters and a riverwalk atop the levee along the riverbank offer the visitor the opportunity to stroll and view both the river and the town, which continue to embrace each other as they have for generations.
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