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A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep
Explorers and fur traders occasionally tested the shallow Platte's navigability in the nineteenth century. How many succeeded? What did they carry? Why did they stop? Railroads eventually made most river traffic obsolete, and the Platte served primarily as a source of irrigation water for crops. But there's more to the story.
This episode is from Lawrence Allin's 1982 Nebraska History Magazine article "'A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep': Attempts to Navigate the Platte River."
The skinny
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