Grant Marsh
As a riverboat pilot in this wilderness Marsh contended with migrating buffalo herds, hostile Indians, and severe weather including violent windstorms, along with numerous underwater hazards from rapids, snags, and sandbars.
From 1873 to 1879 Marsh piloted shallow-draft paddle wheel steamboats on pioneer voyages up the Yellowstone River in support of several military expeditions into Indian country.
[7] Marsh is most often referenced by historians for his exploits in 1876 as the pilot of the Far West, a shallow-draft steamboat operating on the Yellowstone River and its tributaries, which accompanied a U.S. Army column that included Lt.
After the battle, from June 30 to July 3, Marsh piloted the Far West down the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers to Bismarck, carrying fifty-one wounded cavalry troopers from the site of Custer's defeat.
Most noteworthy in riverboat lore, Marsh set a downriver steamboat speed record on this return voyage, traversing some 710 river miles in 54 hours.
[8][9][10][11] After railroads brought about the decline of riverboats on Montana rivers in the 1880s, Marsh continued to work as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi and the lower Missouri on ferries, snag boats, and hauling bulk loads.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, he worked on riverboats hauling troops and supplies for the Union during the Fort Donelson and Shiloh campaigns on the Tennessee River.
After Vicksburg, he began to work on boats traveling up the Missouri River, hauling army supplies and troops in campaigns against hostile Indians in the Dakota Territory.
Freight and passenger rates were high, and steamboat traffic was very lucrative—a single successful trip could pay the entire cost of a shallow-draft stern wheeler riverboat.
Marsh was a major figure in upper Missouri River steamboat navigation from the earliest days of the Montana gold rush in 1862 until 1888.
He brought the Louella to Fort Benton, but then stayed until September, embarking with a load of miners who were catching the last boat of the summer and who had $1,250,000 in gold, the most valuable shipment ever carried on the Missouri.
[3] In late 1869 he took the North Alabama upstream loaded with vegetables, despite the risk of being icebound, going all the way to the mouth of the Yellowstone River to deliver the fresh provisions to Fort Buford.
[5][21] Grant Marsh is most commonly remembered in history as the steamboat pilot/captain of the Far West, which on July 3, 1876, brought the first news to Bismarck of the "Custer Massacre" that had occurred on the Little Bighorn River in the Montana Territory on June 25.
[22][23][24][25] Similar in design to the Far West, the Nellie Peck was also a sternwheel packet, built in 1871 at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, and whose construction was supervised by Captain Marsh.
Late in 1877, he left the Coulson Packet Company, and in the spring of 1878 signed on with Joseph Leighton and Walter B. Jordan, who were Indian traders at Fort Buford, Dakota Territory.
[28][29] In August 1878, Marsh set another steamboat speed record when he piloted the Batchelor upstream from Bismarck to Fort Buford, a distance of 307 miles, in 55 hours and 25 minutes.
[27] In 1901, William D. Washburn, a businessman, had built a railroad to the Missouri River above Bismarck and bought a large tract of land in the area that was rapidly being settled.
Washburn also bought several small light-draft steamboats and barges to haul lumber and merchandise upriver from Bismarck to the settlers, and to bring down grain and other produce.
These new communities were not served by any railroad and Baker saw an opportunity to provide passenger and freight transport to this growing population extending along both banks of the Missouri River.
[27] In 1907, Marsh resigned his position with the Benton Packet Company and on August 23, he went aboard his former boat, Expansion, and confronted the pilot, William R. Massie, who he felt was being abusive.
He was reported to have "died in near poverty", as Issac P. Baker, his former manager at the Benton Packet Company, laid claim to much of his estate because of unpaid bills.
