Arrival of First Steamboat

Date: January 10, 1812 • Location: Port Sulphur, United States

New Orleans (pictured), the first steamship on the Mississippi River, arrived at New Orleans to complete its maiden voyage.

New Orleans was the first steamboat on the western waters of the United States. Her 1811–1812 voyage from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to New Orleans, Louisiana, on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers ushered in the era of commercial steamboat navigation on the western and mid-western continental rivers.