The State authorities then undertook to make the lower part of the Des Moines River navigable by the construction of a system of locks and dams, selling lands embraced in the grant to meet the expenses.
In December, 1853, the State through its officers, let a contract to one Henry O’Reiley of New York to continue the river improvement and to complete the entire work in four years from the 1st of July, 1854, for which he was to receive all of the unsold lands, the tolls, water rents, and all other profits arising from the work for a period of forty years. The State was discouraged with the vast undertaking and was only too glad to have the impracticable scheme transferred to other parties. It was becoming evident to careful observers that the coming means of inland transportation was to be by railroads instead of rivers and canals. Railroad construction had progressed far enough in the East to clearly demonstrate the fact that it must, in the near future, supersede all kinds of artificial slack-water navigation. Canals were too expensive and navigable streams too few to supply inland districts with sufficient means of transportation when the great West should become settled and seek the world’s markets for a vast surplus of food products. Already lines of railroad were being projected over the prairies and through the forests of Ohio, Michigan and Indiana and it was evident that the almost unlimited inland trade and travel in the not distant future must depend largely upon railroads instead of river and canal transportation. The numerous attempts to render small rivers navigable by a system of dams and locks, to secure a sufficient depth of slack water for steamboat navigation for a considerable portion of the year, had usually proved impracticable. Floods from melting snows, the breaking up of ice and the shifting sands, had destroyed the dams or filled up the locks and channels; drouths left insufficient water supply for the late summer and early fall months; while the ice of the long winters closed navigation at a time when
