Jason Kottke, one of my favorite internet curators, continues with his awesome internet ‘finds’. This post points to a cool set of photos of immigrants that came through Ellis Island. The photo above (a Norwegian woman coming into Ellis Island) is found when you click through to the article Jason points to.

I visited Ellis Island years ago. It was a work trip and we had some downtime before our flight home. I ended up walking through mostly in my own.

The exhibit is pretty powerful and conveys what is was like to go through that Ellis Island process.

The act of immigrating from one country to another is a huge leap of faith. The logistics of it made it even riskier in the early 1900s. No phones, no internet, no email. Only letters that took weeks. And trusting those officials you worked with on both sides of the ocean.

The display I particularly remember is the one that explained some of the medical checks. While considered barbaric now, they were ‘best practice’ at the time. But if someone was rejected for medical reasons, they might be put back on a boat to their original country with limited or no chance to explain to the rest of the family what happened.

As a father, I can’t imagine being in that situation and having a child or spouse routed into a different line and then they just disappear. The language barrier would be a major obstacle to finding out their fate. You wouldn’t know until weeks or months later when you may get a letter letting you know that they arrived back safely. If you got a letter.

Or being the one routed back to your original country and not knowing what happened to the rest of your family.

Museums don’t usually bring tears to my eyes, but this one did.

The Mississippi has always been a working river. A huge water highway running north to south carrying freight and people hundreds of miles up and down the river. From the days of canoes to giant steam paddle wheels to today’s behemoth barges and sleek river cruise boats, the river has always been busy.

Unfortunately, due to a little known codicil in the implementation regulations for the 21st Constitutional repealing Prohibition, the entire length of the Mississippi was legally dry between 1933 and 1945. Congress fixed the problem with the “Tippling Rider” to the Flood Relief Bill for the Mississippi River Flood of 1945. But it was a rough couple of years…

During 1933 and 1945, the large barges and passenger vessels were regularly inspected for alcoholic beverages at the embarkation and destination ports. Stops along the way had local inspectors.

However, as Prohibition taught us, like life, booze will find a way. Small boats would supply alcohol and spirit away the empties along the trip. Originally called “fuel boats” to avoid suspicion, they quickly were nicknamed “tavern boats”.

After the fix in 1945, the practice continued as the tavern boats could provide spirits that avoided the surging state taxes. Now known openly by their nickname, boats labelled themselves with the now standard “Tavern” sign. The actually name of the boats were not visible on the boat to make it more difficult to track them. While they were legal, old habits died hard.

The picture above is the tavern boat that operated around the same time as the William M. Black dredge boat. Displayed together to show the symbiosis between the two, this exhibit at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium shows the importance of both types of ships in the Mississippi ecosystem.