The Steamboats and River History Collection is an artificial, or subject-based, collection comprising a variety of documents that have been placed in this collection over the years due to their common subject matter. The bulk of the collection relates to river travel and commerce primarily in the vicinity of St. Louis and on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. The collection includes more than 60 receipts and bills of lading, mostly dated pre-1900, for merchandise shipped on the rivers; letters, reminiscences, and journals, many of which contain accounts of nineteenth-century steamboat travel; brochures, booklets and other printed advertising material for tourist excursion boats, including the popular twentieth-century St. Louis steamboats Admiral, President, and Delta Queen; several twentieth-century newspaper clippings reflecting on the steamboat era in the West; menus; tickets; and licenses for steamboat officers. Of particular note is a letter and petition of Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton to the governor of Upper Louisiana, dated 1810, requesting a monopoly to operate steamboats on the Upper Mississippi River.