Steamboat Arabia

In the middle of River Market (a farmer's market in Downtown KC), there is the Steamboat Arabia Museum. It is a collection of artifacts from the Steamboat Arabia, which sank on the Missouri River in 1856. The boat was not recovered until the 1980s.

Buttons and Native American
Trading Beads

The museum is a very popular location for elementary school field trips, but my class had never gone. Joey had been, but he was so young that he didn't really remember much. So, after breakfast one Saturday morning, we decided to check it out. I really had no idea what to expect. If I'm being honest, I really didn't expect much.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The Steamboat Arabia was packed full of cargo when it sank, making the museum the largest collection of pre-civil war artifacts in the world. Pretty cool, right?

More buttons. There were so
many buttons on this ship!

The Arabia was actually recovered by five private citizens with zero excavation or preservation experience, funded with their own pocketbooks. By the 1980's, due to the movement of the Missouri River, the Arabia was actually now sitting underneath a corn field. Luckily, the farmer that owned the land was open minded when five strangers approached him and ask if they could dig on his land and find the Arabia. The farmer had grown up hearing stories about the ship from his father and grandfather, and the family had always suspected the Arabia was somewhere buried beneath their fields.

When you tour the museum, the diggers are there to answer questions and talk about their experience bringing the Arabia to the surface. One of the diggers explained that they spent $1 million dollars of their own money, without really knowing if they would find anything of value.

The pickles, still edible! 

The Arabia was underground for so long, without any oxygen, that most of the items were totally preserved. It was an artifact  goldmine. The one exception was cotton, so many of the clothing had been destroyed, but even canned pickles and jams were as fresh as the day they were canned. The men that dug up the Arabia opened up the museum in 1991 (ish) and still own the entire collection. They have not sold a single artifact.

There were so many artifacts on the Arabia that items are still being cleaned and preserved. It is expected that it will take another 10 years before every item recovered from the Arabia is cleaned and ready for display.

Doorknobs and supplies
for building homes.

I would definitely recommend the museum to anyone. It is way better than the boring way I have described it in this post. I couldn't believe I had never been there before. It's a tad expensive at $14.50 per person, but definitely worth the money.

This blog/list of mine has really gotten us to do new things and learn more about our city. There are even more things that we've added to our own list of places to see in Kansas City. And we have tickets to our next destination for Monday.

It's Legoland! That's right, two grown adults are going to Legoland, without any children (on a SciFi themed night, no less) and couldn't be more excited.

We are super nerds. And I love it.