Another Shorpy photograph, so soon after the last one? Yes, sorry about that, but the detail on this, ca. 1900-1906 – the sternwheeler "Belle of Calhoun" and sidewheeler "Belle of the Bends" taking on cargo - is astonishing.
Mick Hartley
Politics and Culture
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6 responses to “Mississippi River Landing”
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Magnificent. Certainly makes Mr Kern’s phrase “tote that barge” look even dafter.
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Why astonishing? Contact plates were known to produce very high quality shots. Compared to your average amateur mid-20th century 35mm camera it’s hands down.
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Bugger, it wasn’t Kern, was it? Hammerstein?
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Snoopy – well I thought the detail was astonishing, but no doubt you’re right.
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It was Hammerstein, Kern wrote the music.
Interesting story, maybe apocryphal. Kern and Hammerstein were accepting awards, and someone said that Kern wrote Ole Man River, to which Mrs. Hammerstein answered, “actually my husband wrote Ole Man River, her husband wrote ‘Dum Dum De-Dum Dum.’”LikeLike
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Talk about your causes of AGW! 😉
Actually, I’m only 1/2 kidding; John Valliant, in ‘The Golden Spruce’ http://books.google.ca/books?id=7TctFZbIWaMC&dq=The+Golden+Spruce&pg=PP1&ots=mA5Y9_yslJ&sig=Kuc3xOTFuFF-JiJThYrTEGrzx3U&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
writes about the deforestation of the World (as an aside to the story), and the consumption of N. American forests for fuel. These riverboats were huge wood hogs.LikeLike
Mick Hartley 
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