Steamboat Enterprise — First Up the Mississippi, eighteen fifteen

At Brownsville, Pennsylvania, a marker recalls a milestone in American transportation. In eighteen fourteen, the steamboat Enterprise was built just upriver at Bridgeport, the fourth steamboat constructed in western Pennsylvania. Her engine was designed by Daniel French, and Captain Henry Miller Shreve commanded her downriver to New Orleans, leaving that December and arriving in time to support Andrew Jackson's defense of the city.

The following summer, the Enterprise steamed back up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Pittsburgh, becoming the first steamboat ever to ascend both rivers under her own power. The voyage proved that steam could beat the current, unlocking the entire interior of North America to commercial navigation. Brownsville itself grew into one of the continent's leading boatbuilding centers, launching more than seven hundred steamboats between eighteen twenty-five and nineteen oh three, making this bend of the Monongahela the birthplace of the Western river trade.