The 140’-long sternwheel ferry Kiwanis was built at Dubuque, Iowa in 1923. Owned by the Cairo City Ferry Company, the Kiwanis operated locally between Dubuque and Birds Point, Mo. until a bridge across the Mississippi River at that location put the line out of business. Across from Cairo, Ill., Birds Point had been a major river and railroad crossroads for cotton in the 19th century.
The Kiwanis was bought by Cincinnati’s Greene Line Steamers in 1930 and operated as a cargo freighter transporting agricultural and manufactured products up and down the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Huntington, W. Va. from 1933 to 1943. In 1936, it was rebuilt and renamed Evergreene.
The Evergreene was sold in 1943 to Cincinnati riverboat captain John Beatty. In 1948 it was bought by the Merchant Paving Company and became a sand dredge. It later sank near Louisville, Ky. and was dismantled.
This wheel is from the Kiwanis’s original CCFC service as a Mississippi River ferry. Standing high above the vessel’s deck, the river pilot steered by standing to one side of the wheel or the other.
Our collection database is a work in progress. We may update this record based on further research and review. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online.
If you would like to know how you can use content on this page, see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions.