Recounts the voyage in 1811 of the "New Orleans", the first steamboat to travel down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, a trip fraught with dangers including North America's most violent earthquake.
In 1896, fourteen-year-old Megan joins her sister and family on their steamboat for the summer riding up the Mississippi River towards St. Paul, Minnesota, and through all of their adventures, Megan realizes what is her "true calling.".
Photographs and text describe the origins of sternwheel paddle boats and how they aided in the settling of the interior of the United States. Also included is a look at today's sternwheelers.
Explains how industrialization prompted the need for long-distance transportation in nineteenth-century America, and looks at the development of the steam locomotive, cross-country railroads, and the steamship.
Marie-Grace, on a journey up the Mississippi River in a large steamboat with her father, meets Wilhelmina Newman, a girl her age who is traveling alone and carrying clues to hidden Gold Rush treasure, and, together, they work to unravel them.
