1819 to 1890 Steamboats operated on the Red River to Shreveport, Louisiana. In April 1815, Captain Henry Miller Shreve was the first person to bring a steamboat, the Enterprise, up the Red River. During the 1830s, farmers cultivated land for large cotton plantations; dependent on slave labor, cotton production supported new planter wealth in the ante-bellum years. Steamboats ran scheduled trips between Camden, Arkansas and New Orleans. A person could travel from any eastern city to the Ouachita River without touching land, except to transfer from one steamboat to another. In the late 1830s, the steamboats in rivers on the west side of the Mississippi River were a long, wide, shallow draft vessel, lightly built with an engine on the deck. These newer steamboats could sail in just 20 inches of water. Contemporaries claimed that they could "run with a lot of heavy dew". In 1881 a snagboat was employed on the river and a boat for dredging in the shoals to the amount of $141,879.24. Earlier plans had called for the construction of locks and dams. Civil War Skirmishes took place near the Ouachita River during the American Civil War. On September 1, 1863, forces of the Seventeenth Wisconsin led by Brig. Gen. M. M. Crocker crossed from Natchez, Mississippi to Vidalia, the seat of Concordia Parish, and moved toward the lower Ouachita in the section called the Black River. That night the Confederate steamer Rinaldo was captured by Union forces after a short artillery duel and was destroyed. Crocker fought with the few troops stationed on the Black River and moved toward Harrisonburg, seat of Catahoula Parish. Navigation A 337-mile-long "Ouachita-Black Rivers Navigation Project" began in 1902, to create a navigable waterway from Camden, Arkansas to Jonesville, Louisiana, and when completed in 1924 included six locks and dams that were 84 feet wide and 600 feet in length, having from 3 to 5 tainter gates. Including the Black River the total navigable length is 351 miles. The Ouachita-Black Rivers Navigation Project has less than a million tons of shipping annually which has the likely prospect of the future withdrawal of federal support. The project's system of dams and locks enhances the river's recreational use and regional water supply. Floods Flood of 1882 The Ouachita River reached a historic flood stage crest with a river gauge reading at Camden, Arkansas of 46 feet on May 12, 1882. Flood of