This month’s spotlight can be found on display in our River of Innovation exhibit! This inconspicuous handwheel shut off the steam for the final time on the Charles H. West. The Charles H. West was an Army Corp of Engineers snagboat, a vessel used to clear navigational hazards such as sunken logs and debris. It operated along the lower Mississippi and Red Rivers from 1934 until 1958 when it was decommissioned in favor of newer, more efficient diesel-powered technologies. Excess equipment were salvaged and sold, including this handwheel.
The engraving at the center of the valve reads, “CHAS. H. WEST 1934-1958 THIS VALVE SHUT OFF STEAM FOR LAST TIME.” The handwheel signifies the last time this vessel was moved by its own steam power and paddlewheel, being towed from location to location afterward.
The snagboat was sold and eventually stripped down to its bare steel hull. New owners built a new superstructure on top, one that looked more like a packet boat, a vessel that carries passengers and cargo. This façade was inspired the ornate and romanticized Victorian paddlewheel steamboats. The new snag-turned-packet opened as a permanently moored restaurant, the “Lt. Robert E. Lee.” The restaurant name referred to both the early career of Robert E. Lee, who engineered a system of dikes and a dam to remedy navigation near St. Louis, as well as the famous Robert E. Lee steamboat (1866), famous for racing and winning against the Natchez in 1870. The eatery became an iconic landmark underneath the Gateway Arch, often outearning other city restaurants in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Lt. Robert E. Lee restaurant closed following the Great Flood of 1993, reopened with a Mesquite Charle’s onboard in 2001, shuttered shortly after the September 11 Attacks on the Twin Towers, briefly towed to Missouri, returned in 2007 following legal battles, and then sat vacant in St. Louis’ industrial district. Restoration of the Lt. Robert E. Lee vessel for the St. Charles riverfront met an abrupt end in 2010 as a massive fire erupted, eating away at flammable insulation and wooden superstructure while firefighters found nearby hydrants completely inoperable. The former Charles H. West was scrapped and finally laid to rest.
Due to the events following decommission, not many items still exist of the last sternwheel workboats of the Vicksburg District Fleet. This valve is one of the few. You can find it in a vitrine in the Fred W. Woodward Fright House, here at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium thanks to donation by Colonel Milton and Emily Barschdorf in 2002.