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Centennial celebration of steamboat navigation on inland waters, Pittsburgh, PA, 1911.
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An image of a long line of steam ships docked and a huge crowd in the foreground.

Credit: From Pennsylvania and Its Manifold Activities, 1912.

In 1811, only four years after Robert Fulton took the Clermont on its maiden voyage up the Hudson River, a Pittsburgh boat yard launched the steamboat New Orleans which soon traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to its namesake city. Pittsburgh soon became the hub of a regional shipbuilding industry that launched more than 2,000 steamboats before the Civil War.

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