In December 1814, Capt. Henry M. Shreve brought a cargo of supplies for Gen. Andrew Jackson's army from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in his side-wheeler, the Enterprise. He climaxed his trip by running the British batteries below New Orleans to deliver military supplies to Fort St. Philip. (While Robert Fulton is usually given credit for development of western steamboats, Shreve worked out structural and mechanical modifications without which the steamboat would have been useless in the west. Shreve was also instrumental in breaking the monopoly of Fulton on the Mississippi.)

Although steamboats were in service between New Orleans and Natchez, they had not yet traveled far upriver. Shreve met this challenge with his Washington, built in 1816 at Wheeling, West Virginia. It had a flat, shallow hull and a high-pressure engine. In 1817, the Washington made the round trip from Louisville to New Orleans and return in 41 days.

The golden era of the paddle-wheeler had begun. Where in 1814 only 21 steamboats arrived in New Orleans, in 1819 there were 191; in 1833 more than 1,200 steamboat cargoes were unloaded.

Some steamboats were operating on the Mississippi and Ohio, mostly between New Orleans and Louisville. In 1817 there were 14; in 1819, 31. But the appearance of the steamboat on the Mississippi River above the mouth of the Ohio was delayed for several years: In August of 1817, the Zebulon M. Pike made the trip up the river to St. Louis. Three years later, the Western Engineer made a trip from St. Louis up the Missouri River and later a part of the way up the Mississippi above St. Louis. In April 1823, the Virginia left St. Louis bound for scattered posts up the Mississippi. Twenty days and 683 miles later, the Virginia docked at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, the first steamboat to make this trip.

By 1830, the steamboat age had come to the upper Mississippi, and by 1840, there was heavy river commerce between St. Louis and the head of navigation at St. Anthony's Falls (vicinity of St. Paul).

Not only could the steamboat haul freight, but it had comfortable accommodations for passengers. Even more important, it could travel upstream almost as easily as it traveled downstream. In the period preceding the Civil War, its decks carried cotton and other produce to market; it brought back the staples and the fineries available only from outside the region; and it brought visitors from afar and furnished transportation to other sections of the country. Steamboat travel was hazardous and irregular in the early years. Although it furnished faster, more dependable, and more useful transportation, it left much to be desired during its early period of development.

Before the invention of the steamboat, a trip from Louisville to New Orleans often required 4 months. In 1820, the trip was made by steamboat in 20 days. By 1838, the same trip was being made in 6 days.

In 1814, the Orleans made the 268-mile trip from New Orleans to Natchez in 6 days 6 hours 40 minutes. In 1880, the Robert E. Lee made the trip in 17 hours 11 minutes.

These boats were by no means small by Mississippi River standards. The Lee was 300 ft long and 1,467 tons, while the Natchez was 301.5 ft long and 1,547 tons. They were both longer than the Sprague, the largest paddle-wheel towboat ever built, and one had greater tonnage.

The famous race between the Robert E. Lee and the Natchez was made in July 1870 from New Orleans to St. Louis, 1,278 river miles. This was won by the Lee with a time of 3 days 18 hours 14 minutes.

The packet boat brought a phenomenal increase in traffic. In 1834, there were 230 packets; by 1849, there were about 1,000, approximating a total of 250,000 tons. The packet continued to be the principal means of transportation in the Mississippi River Valley until the latter part of the nineteenth century; then, more and more of the commerce began to be diverted to the expanding railroads. River commerce seemed to have died almost completely.

In 1907, the Sprague set a world's all-time record for towing-60 barges of coal, weighing 67,307 tons, covering an area of 6-1/2 acres, and measuring 925 feet by 312 feet.

The St. Louis arrived in New Orleans in 1931 with 28,200 bales of cotton on eight barges and three other barges of grain and merchandise. This is supposed to be the largest cotton tow that ever traveled the Mississippi River. The steamboat era was ending due to the introduction of modern, diesel-driven vessels with greater towing power some 30 years earlier.