Arabia Steamboat Museum

The Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City displays the astonishing recovered cargo of a riverboat that sank in the Missouri River in 1856. The steamboat Arabia struck a submerged tree snag and went down with some 200 tons of cargo bound for frontier towns upriver. Over the following century the river changed course, leaving the wreck buried under farmland far from the current channel. In 1988 a team of local excavators located and dug up the boat, recovering an extraordinarily well-preserved trove of goods intended for nineteenth-century pioneers. The finds include clothing, tools, dishes, bottled goods, and even preserved food, offering a remarkable time capsule of frontier commerce. The museum displays these artifacts along with parts of the vessel itself. The preservation is so complete that many items look nearly new. Visitors gain an intimate view of everyday material life on the American frontier. The story of the excavation, carried out by a family of local salvagers, is itself compelling. It is one of the most unusual and beloved museums in the region.