Historical interpretive essay by Ray Breun, published February 1981. Original historical claims are retained as period reporting; numerical and chronology concerns are listed below.
One would have thought that the new year 1849 held great promise.
A carpenter/ construction foremen named John Marshall had found gold in early 1848 where the American River flows into the Sacramento River. Nobody believed him.
But by December 1848 a small bottle of gold worth about $50 reached the desk of one James K. Polk who used it as a visual aid when he gave his inaugural address that month.
With the promise of gold in the West, the movement of humanity into the western United States took off in earnest. St. Louis, the point of entry on the Mississippi at the mouth of the Missouri, looked forward to a great year. Room rents and wagon prices inflated daily. Riverboat traffic picked up beyond expectations.
Many foreigners came through New Orleans, where they boarded steamboats directly, and entered the United States at St. Louis. Tens of thousands of prospective gold seekers left Europe and Asia and did not set foot on land again until they reached the Riverfront where the Gateway Arch now stands.
The early spring of 1849 brought an “ill wind” to the city. Asiatic cholera was found in New Orleans and some cases were suspected on incoming boats. Cholera was not unknown on the frontier. Whole Indian tribes had succumbed to it as early as 1837.
But now the word “epidemic” was along the river. Over 400 St. Louis residents died of cholera between March and August, 1849. That’s about 25 people a day.
No one really knows how many gold seekers died in the city. Arsenal Island, now a part of the Illinois shore, was made the entry point of the port of St. Louis to keep cholera victims on the incoming steamboats out of the city.
But the boats brought another problem of their own that year.
It was 17 May 1849 when the Edward Bates tied up behind another steamboat, the White Cloud, at the foot of Cherry Street. Later called Franklin Avenue and now known as Dr. Martin Luther King Street, Cherry Street was the middle of the Irish settlement of North St. Louis and known for its fights and brawls as well as its saloons and bawdy houses. Steamboats were moored two and three deep, even five deep, into the Mississippi current that spring.
The dozen years before the Civil War were the golden years of the riverboat trade and St. Louis was the hub of the gold rush overlanders.
Getting back to that Thursday, 17 May 1849, some folks say it was the fresh paint on the White Cloud that took a spark from the Edward Bates or some other boat along the levee.
But boat fires were rather common.
The levee hands cut the two boats free and they drifted afire out into the current. Usually, with the prevailing west winds, burning boats ended up smoking hulks on the Illinois shore. Not that night– the wind was strong from the northeast!
It blew the White Cloud into the boats tied up between Laurel and Vine Streets (Laurel is now called Washington Avenue and Vine was one block south of it).
The fire started by the White Cloud spread among the boats within minutes and from the cotton, tobacco, skins and timber stacked on the levee awaiting shipment.
As fate would have it, one of the boats tied up near Pine Street had a load of black powder.
It blew, spreading fire to the buildings along Front Street (now called Wharf Street). Meanwhile, the Edward Bates drifted a little downstream before coming into the boats moored between Elm and Myrtle Streets (Elm was one block south of Walnut and Myrtle is now known as Clark Street).
It started a second fire which soon spread to the levee and into the buildings along Front Street.
The volunteer fire companies were outflanked by the fire. Due to the exploits of one Captain Thomas B. Targee, the fire was held to “only” 15 blocks.
He blew up part of one block (and himself) to stop the fire, Altogether, some 418 buildings, 23 boats, and tons of merchandise were destroyed in the blaze.
The fire didn’t slow the cholera at all.
It wasn’t until August that the disease burned itself out.
Bellefontaine Cemetery was organized in 1849 to handle the disposition of the victims of that year. Among the founders of Bellefontaine Cemetery Association was William M. McPherson who had the foresight to memorialize himself by naming a street for himself in a subdivision he built west of Grand Avenue.
To prevent fires of the 1849 type, the first building code in the history of the city was passed in the fall of that year.
It called for brick, stone and cast iron as the only legal building materials, and the walls of all buildings or residences had to be at least three bricks thick. That code remained virtually unchanged until 1960.
But the biggest effect of the 1849 catastrophes was the push to the “suburbs”. Lucas Place, the first private street, was established in 1850 as a good place for the wealthy to escape the evil vapors (disease and smoke) of the city. Carondelet, Florissant, Manchester and other country towns had no cholera that year at all.
Many affluent and not so affluent people moved to the country during the 1850’s and only worked in the city.
The Riverfront and levee changed drastically because of 1849.
The wreckage of the boats and burned buildings was pushed into the river to widen the wharf.
All the older buildings constructed before 1849 and not of stone or brick were destroyed before the 1850’s were out.
It is for this reason that the Old Cathedral, built between 1826 and 1829, is the oldest remaining building in St. Louis.
The streets going to the wharf were widened as the teamsters had requested to make it easier to move merchandise off the levee into brick warehouses and out of the path of floods and fires.
Thus, it was because of the events of 1849 that the levee looks the way it does today, that we live in brick houses, that we have some of the largest cemeteries of any city in the United States, and that we have one of the largest health industries of any city in the world. It’s amazing what a $50 bottle of gold can do in the hands of a president at the inauguration time.
Originally published in The Paper, February 1981.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: The historical column prints over400cholera deaths betweenMarchandAugust1849 and about25perday, which do not reconcile; its claim ofPolk’sDecember1848inaugural address is also questionable. Original claims preserved as1981reporting, not independently verified historical findings.
Original source: SD_Times1981_02.pdf, printed page(s) 3; PDF page(s) 3.
