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.
