Lt. Robert E. Lee riverboat, St. Louis, Missouri 1971

The Lt. Robert E. Lee riverboat sits along the St. Louis riverfront in Missouri, 1971, captured during the height of its years as a sightseeing and entertainment attraction. Built in 1969 by Marine Builders of Jeffersonville, Indiana, the vessel wasn’t an authentic 19th-century steamboat but rather a modern diesel-powered excursion boat styled to resemble the grand sidewheel steamers of the Mississippi River’s past. With its decorative railings, tall twin smokestacks, and striped boarding awnings, it played heavily into the nostalgia and romance of Mark Twain-era river travel. The boat operated sightseeing cruises, dinner trips, and special events from the St. Louis levee, where late-1960s and early-1970s cars—like the Chrysler Newport parked in the foreground—completed the scene of Americana tourism.

Named after the famous Confederate steamboat that raced the Natchez in 1870, the modern Lt. Robert E. Lee served St. Louis through the 1970s and early 1980s. By the mid-1980s, competition, rising maintenance costs, and changes in waterfront tourism put pressure on the operation. The vessel was eventually sold, relocated, and repurposed, spending periods as a floating attraction and restaurant in several river cities. After falling into disrepair, the boat was finally scrapped in the early 2000s, marking the end of its life as one of the last large showboat-style river excursion vessels of its kind. Today, photographs like this one recall a brief but memorable chapter when the Mississippi again echoed with the silhouette—if not the steam—of paddlewheelers along the St. Louis shoreline.