This is not a tragedy or a cursed object (which, yes, is coming up in the next few months), but it is a story that, again, if Hollywood had written this, I wouldn’t have believed it. It’s basically a buried treasure.
This is one of the most amazing stories I’ve ever read about. Shipwrecks are found all the time, all over the world. What makes this so special? It was completely pristine, with a LOAD of supplies found not in water but buried 45 feet below the ground surface. They found tons, and that is not just a phrase; I mean tons (200 tons!) of boots, coins, money, liquor, and every conceivable object that a general store would have in 1856. Boots that you could wear now, edible food, and liquor that would be aged perfectly. This paddleboat was operating when Samuel Langhorne Clemens was riding and piloting riverboats (not this one) before writing about them, so what a time in history!
The story of the paddleboat Arabia did not end when she sank in 1856. In many ways, the most amazing part of her story happened more than 130 years later. The Arabia hit a submerged tree in the Missouri River near what is now Kansas. She sank quickly, but everyone did get off the ship except a mule that was on the stern.
In the late 1980s, a group led by brothers David and Greg Hawley became fascinated with finding the lost steamboat. They studied old maps, river records, and historical documents. After years of research, they believed the Arabia was sitting beneath a field nearly half a mile from the modern Missouri River. Many people thought the idea sounded impossible. How could a steamboat be buried under farmland?
When the Arabia sank in 1856, she was sitting in the Missouri River. But the Missouri was famous for changing course. Over the decades, the river slowly wandered across the landscape. It cut new channels and abandoned old ones. The channel where Arabia sank eventually filled with silt, sand, and mud. Year after year, floods deposited more sediment on top of the wreck. Farmers later plowed the land above it, never realizing a steamboat was buried beneath their fields. By the 1980s, the wreck was about 45 feet underground and nearly half a mile from the modern river.
The team brought in equipment and began digging in 1988. What they found stunned them. Nearly 45 feet below the surface, they uncovered the remains of the Arabia. Even more incredible was what was inside. The muddy, oxygen-free conditions had preserved thousands of everyday items from 1856. There were boots, dishes, tools, clothing, food, and supplies that had been headed to frontier towns. It was like opening a time capsule General Store from just before the Civil War.
Today, many of those artifacts can be seen at the Arabia Steamboat Museum. The discovery gave historians a rare look at life on the American frontier. The Arabia may have sunk in the Missouri River, but her greatest voyage happened underground. After spending more than a century hidden beneath a farm field, she finally returned to tell her story. Sad story now, but the museum is closing; it does have good news. They are looking to put it in a larger place with more parking.
They will need more space because they are about to dig up another steamboat from underground, the Malta. I do admire these guys; they could have sold this merchandise for a fortune, but instead made a museum where everyone could see the items. And by the way…they are still archiving the Arabia items, so there are still more items people haven’t seen. That’s the volume of the goods they have!
Check out the second-to-the-bottom video if you can. A man eats some of the food there…in this case, a pickle. He said it was crispy and sweet!
This guy ate some food from the steamboat Arabia.
