Steins Street Landing: (Satellite, this looks like the remnant of a ferry float.)
Davis Street Ferry: (Satellite)
Unnamed Ferry: (Satellite, this is based on the topo map below.)
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| Kelly Knowles posted Steamer Missouri ferried railcars across the Mississippi River at Steins Street Landing, transferring train loads bound east and west for the Missouri Pacific Railroad in St. Louis. MoPac opened the ferry at Carondelet in 1873, in the Patch Neighborhood (around today's 7600 block of South Broadway). Upriver at the city wharf, Eads Bridge was under construction, where a riverboat's hauling railcars was suddenly frowned upon. "Businessmen took a dim view of the railroad operation on the levee with its long loading ramp," observed Wayne Leeman for The Post-Dispatch in 1975. "For one thing, it inconvenienced steamboat traffic." "The indicated solution by the railroad was to move the ferry somewhere else. For this, the foot of Steins Street was selected. To feed [train traffic], the Carondelet branch was built. Construction started in 1872." "For years the transfer operation at Steins Street used two boats built at Metropolis, Ill. The Pacific was completed in September, 1878, and The Missouri in June, 1879." Digital image from the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library. —30— Michael Chance: I wonder how long after the Eads Bridge opened the Steins St. Ferry and other railroad ferries up and down the river continued to operate. The McKinley bridge opened in 1910, but the next railroad bridge, the lower deck of the Municipal "Free" Bridge (later renamed the MacArthur Bridge) didn't start carrying rail traffic until the late 1920s. From the Google satellite view, you can kind of see where the railroad tracks leading to the ferry landing would be on both sides of the river. It appears that Kelly plagiarized Matt Chaney's post except for this line: RAILROAD TRANSFER BOAT IN SOUTH ST. LOUIS, CIRCA 1880 Matt Chaney shared with the same description Johnny Bridges: Matt, in my career I worked a lot at the St Louis Missouri Pacific Ivory Yard on the DeSoto Subdivision located adjacent to the Mississippi River just south of where River des Peres empties into the Mississippi. It was between Steins Street and not far above Jefferson Barracks... I believe the River City Casino sits near there now... The DeSoto Subdivision ran through there, and there were round-the-clock switch engines that worked that busy little yard, a lot of switching and many industries were serviced. On the east side of Ivory between the mainline and the Mississippi was a yard we called the "boat yard," where we stored cars and worked an industry, National Lead, now a defunct company which made paint pigment but died with the led industry in Missouri. Anyway, the Boat Yard was what was left of the RR ferry history over to East Carondelet, IL. Clement John Piotrowski: The first train to cross the Mississippi river was in 1857, Mayor John M Wimer held a celebration for the B & O rr. That was the same time the Dred Scott decision came back from the supreme court and the Missouri-Kansas border wars were occurring. Things were heating up for the unCivil War. |
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| John Francis Saxburry III commented on Matt's share You can still see the tracks along the riverbank. [I don't see the tracks, but I had found what looks like the remnants of a ferry float.] |
This is the Illinois landing instead of the Missouri landing, but it is the same Davis Street Ferry.
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| Matt Chaney posted Davis Street Ferryboat, 1940s, sternwheeler J.W.S. at the East Carondelet Landing in Illinois, across the Mississippi River from South St. Louis, Carondelet. As the last of St. Louis ferries, the Davis Street operation closed in November 1945, one year after opening of the Jefferson Barracks Bridge. Copyrighted photograph from the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, with digital image for non-commercial use. |
MoPac must have moved its ferry operations from Steins Street downstream to next to its Ivory railyard.
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| 1933/33 Jefferson Barracks Quad @ 24,000 |
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