riverboat museum in kansas city

— OPEN FOR VISITORS —

The arabia steamboat museum, recovered 1988.

THE ARABIA STEAMBOAT MUSEUM 

A popular Kansas City attraction for more than 25 years 

When the mighty Steamboat Arabia sank near Kansas City on September 5, 1856, she carried 200 tons of mystery cargo. Lost for 132 years, its recovery in 1988 was like finding the King Tut’s Tomb of the Missouri River. The discovery was truly a modern day treasure-hunting story at its best.

The artifacts are preserved and displayed at the Arabia Steamboat Museum, located in the historic City Market. From clothing, fine china and carpentry tools to guns, dishes and children’s toys to the world’s oldest pickles—the collection captivates visitors of all ages. Whether it’s your first visit to this favorite Kansas City attraction or you come every year, the treasures of the Steamboat Arabia will connect you to American history in a new and exciting way.

INTRODUCING THE NATIONAL STEAMBOAT MUSEUM

The Arabia is an incredible story ... but there are other stories to tell. Hundreds of 1800s steamboats were lost to the Missouri River, hidden deep beneath riverbeds and farmfields. The National Steamboat Museum will be the pre-eminent historical and educational facility of our nation's long-lost steamboats and the stories they carried.

The National Steamboat Museum's vision is to discover, recover, and preserve other collections similar to that of the Arabia Steamboat for the cultural, historical and educational benefit of future generations.

Please donate here to help make this new, state-of-the-art facility a reality.

Monday-Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.*

Noon - 5:00 p.m.*

*Closed on New Year's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Closed one hour early on Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Halloween and New Year's Eve.

Visit includes a series of short videos that show the story of this historic excavation and a short movie. Guests will see the treasures recovered from the Arabia and watch preservationists restoring artifacts in our lab.

Arabia Steamboat Museum 400 Grand Blvd. Kansas City, MO 64106

(816) 471-1856

[email protected]

Arabia Steamboat Museum

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Arabia Steamboat Museum - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

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The Arabia Steamboat Museum Virtual Tour

Welcome to the Arabia's 360° virtual tour!

Click on the tour below to access.

Steamboat Arabia Virtual Tour

We hope you enjoy visiting the museum from afar.

Once you purchase the tour, you will be able to explore the museum for 24 hours.

Click anywhere you seen a yellow icon for more information, and let us know if you have any additional questions!

Please note, this is still a beta version of the virtual tour, and we are still working on perfecting it. It works on mobile, but is not completely optimized yet. We welcome your feedback to help make it better in the future, so please email us at [email protected] if you have any comments. Thanks for being one of the first to take our Virtual Tour!

Theme: Illdy . © Arabia Steamboat Museum 2021. All Rights Reserved.

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In September 1856, the steamboat Arabia sank near Kansas City with 200 tons of cargo bound for towns in the west. In 1988, the Arabia excavation began, resulting in the astonishing discovery of pre-Civil War artifacts which are now on display. This unique museum has been featured in national television programs, magazines and in numerous newspapers.

Tours are conducted every half hour; last entry at 3:30 p.m.

Closed: Jan. 1, Easter, Thanksgiving and Dec. 24-25.

Information

Additional information.

Arabia Steamboat Museum

• Facilities 4.5
• Atmosphere 5.0

The side-wheel steamer Arabia was constructed in 1853 for powering through the muddy Missouri River waters with up to 200 tons of supplies in tow. But later, it snagged a felled tree trunk and quickly disappeared under the sea. More than a century later, David Hawley discovered the sunken steamer a half-mile from the river bank beneath 45 feet of earth; it then became the focus of the Arabia Steamboat Museum.

Today you can take a tour of the steamer's deck and hull, but there's also a great deal more to see. The museum features a general store, a cargo gallery and several other galleries with odds and ends recovered from the excavation of the great Steamboat Arabia. In addition to seeing many of the well-preserved cargo pieces that were excavated from the wreck, the tour includes a video summarizing the history of the Arabia and how they were able to retrieve the supplies.

Recent tourists said their visits here were fascinating. Many noted that it was interesting to learn about the history of the ship and added that the guides are very knowledgeable and friendly. Travelers also said the museum was easy to navigate and well laid out.

The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays. Admission costs $14.50 for adults and $5.50 for kids between the ages of 4 and 14. Guided tours start on the hour and half-hour, and last about 20 minutes. The museum is located in the River Market neighborhood of Kansas City; there's a free parking lot nearby and a B-cycle bike-share station at 3rd Street and Grand Boulevard. For more information, visit the website . 

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Arabia Steamboat Museum

Kansas City

In River Market, this museum displays 200 tons of salvaged 'treasure' from a riverboat that sank in 1856 (one of hundreds claimed by the Missouri River).

400 Grand Blvd

Get In Touch

816-471-1856

https://www.1856.com

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Buried Treasure: The Steamboat Arabia Museum

January 20, 2016

Castor oil and carpenter’s tools, nutmeg and wedding bands, porcelain figurines and marbles are just a few recovered items displayed at the Arabia Steamboat Museum . There’s French perfume created more than a century ago – the oldest in the world with its scent intact – and still edible preserved pickles.

There’s also a 10-ton section of the boat’s stern, a full-sized reproduction of its main deck, and a water-churning 28-foot replica of the ship’s mighty paddlewheel. It turns before a wall-spanning mural that replicates Kansas City riverside view, circa 1850s.

Since it opened, in 1991, Arabia Steamboat Museum has become one of the most popular museums throughout the Midwest. Good Morning America, Readers Digest, National Geographic and Smithsonian are only a few venues that have featured this unusual, privately owned facility.

The museum’s story began on September 5th, 1856. As the Steamboat Arabia carried passengers and cargo along the Missouri River, a deeply embedded tree trunk tore through the heart of the boat. Although all of the 130 passengers were rescued (the only casualty was a mule), mud and silt buried much of the vessel, including merchandise bound for frontier stores, the passengers’ personal belongings, and 400 barrels of Kentucky bourbon.

More than 130 years later the passage of time had shifted the mighty Missouri’s course. When Bob Hawley, his sons David and Greg, and family friends, David Luttrell and Jerry Mackey excavated the Arabia more than 30 years ago, the enormous vehicle lay 45 feet below ground and half a mile from the river’s current channel.

The team had spent a year assembling excavation supplies, and construction equipment. As recovery and preservation expenses grew to more than a million dollars, the team decided to create a museum that would display these treasures for public viewing. What these modern-day explorers unearthed was 200 tons of cargo.

Today, visitors from across the globe catch an enduring glimpse of this magnificent vessel before its demise, at the Arabia Steamboat Museum. There’s a short video about excavation efforts and large windows beside the preservation lab provide visitors with an inside look at cleaning and preservation efforts.

“On the Arabia dig, every day was Christmas,” said David Hawley. “This is the single greatest collection of pre-Civil War artifacts in the world. Cleaning is a bigger deal than the dig. We didn’t have a lot of prior knowledge about preservation and the entire restoration process will probably take 30 years. It takes four to five months to restore a single boot.”

Doorknobs, and clay pipe bowls, dozens of skeleton keys and a barrel marked ‘spiced pigs’ feet’ were among the excavated treasures. The team found more than five million trade beads as well as Brazil nut shells and pumpkin seeds, thousands of glistening buttons in every pastel color, hundreds of brass thimbles and even a box of ‘segars,’ priced at $1.62.

The Arabia Steamboat Museum provides a fascinating look at daily life in the 1850s, through one-of-a-kind displays that showcase personal and commercial artifacts.

Arabia Steamboat Museum, 400 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO, 816-471-1856. Open daily except on major holidays. Tickets priced from $5.50 to $14.50.

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Steamboat Arabia Museum

• 400 Grand Blvd
• Kansas City , MO 64106
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Visit the Arabia Steamboat Museum, and hear the legendary tale of the loss and discovery of the Great Arabia – and its 200 tons of cargo. This amazing story has been featured on Good Morning America, Cable News Network (CNN), National Geographic Traveler, The Smithsonian and Antiques Road Show among others.

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MUSEUM – STEAMBOAT ARABIA TAKE A TRIP BACK IN TIME

Experience life during the time of westward expansion with a tour of the Arabia Steamboat Museum, home to the largest single collection of pre-Civil War artifacts in the world. This one-of-a-kind time capsule of life on the American frontier in the mid-nineteenth century shares the same vintage as the early days of City Market. Arabia Steamboat merchant link

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Park University’s Kansas City Area Commencement Set for May 4

The event will include 687 Park University students eligible to participate in the ceremony — 242 students are set to receive a master’s degree and/or graduate certificate, and 445 students are scheduled to receive a bachelor’s degree, associate degree and/or undergraduate certificate.

Rojas, an accomplished C-suite executive turned entrepreneur, has built enterprises in for-profit environments, as well as for economic, political and social change. In 2017, after three decades of leading organizations dedicated to advancing key population growth segments, Rojas transferred her development skills to co-lead the two Tico entities which were established by Rojas and her husband in 2013. The enterprise is a full-service multimedia production and bilingual marketing company that developed a Spanish language broadcast and a community engagement platform for professional sports teams. Her first partnership was formed with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2016, and has produced broadcasts for several National Football League, Major League Soccer and collegiate sports teams.

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Once Upon a Time, the World of Picture Books Came to Life

The tale behind a new museum of children’s literature is equal parts imagination, chutzpah and “The Little Engine That Could.”

By Elisabeth Egan

Photographs and Video by Chase Castor

Elisabeth Egan followed the Rabbit Hole as it was nearing completion. She has written about several of its inhabitants for The Times.

On a crisp Saturday morning that screamed for adventure, a former tin can factory in North Kansas City, Mo., thrummed with the sound of young people climbing, sliding, spinning, jumping, exploring and reading.

Yes, reading.

If you think this is a silent activity, you haven’t spent time in a first grade classroom. And if you think all indoor destinations for young people are sticky, smelly, depressing hellholes, check your assumptions at the unmarked front door.

Welcome to the Rabbit Hole, a brand-new, decade-in-the-making museum of children’s literature founded by the only people with the stamina for such a feat: former bookstore owners. Pete Cowdin and Deb Pettid are long-married artists who share the bullish determination of the Little Red Hen. They’ve transformed the hulking old building into a series of settings lifted straight from the pages of beloved picture books.

Before we get into what the Rabbit Hole is, here’s what it isn’t: a place with touch screens, a ball pit, inscrutable plaques, velvet ropes, a cloying soundtrack or adults in costumes. It doesn’t smell like graham crackers, apple juice or worse (yet). At $16 per person over 2 years old, it also isn’t cheap.

During opening weekend on March 16, the museum was a hive of freckles and gap toothed grins, with visitors ranging in age from newborn to well seasoned. Cries of “Look up here!,” “There’s a path we need to take!” and “There’s Good Dog Carl !” created a pleasant pandemonium. For every child galloping into the 30,000 square foot space, there was an adult hellbent on documenting the moment.

Did you ever have to make a shoe box diorama about your favorite book? If so, you might remember classmates who constructed move-in ready mini kingdoms kitted out with gingham curtains, clothespin people and actual pieces of spaghetti.

Cowdin, Pettid and their team are those students, all grown up.

The main floor of the Rabbit Hole consists of 40 book-themed dioramas blown up to life-size and arranged, Ikea showroom-style, in a space the size of two hockey rinks. The one inspired by John Steptoe’s “ Uptown ” features a pressed tin ceiling, a faux stained-glass window and a jukebox. In the great green room from “ Goodnight Moon ,” you can pick up an old-fashioned phone and hear the illustrator’s son reading the story.

One fictional world blends into the next, allowing characters to rub shoulders in real life just as they do on a shelf. Visitors slid down the pole in “The Fire Cat,” slithered into the gullet of the boa constrictor in “ Where the Sidewalk Ends ” and lounged in a faux bubble bath in “ Harry the Dirty Dog .” There are plenty of familiar faces — Madeline , Strega Nona , Babar — but just as many areas dedicated to worthy titles that don’t feature household names, including “ Crow Boy ,” “ Sam and the Tigers ,” “ Gladiola Garden ” and “ The Zabajaba Jungle .”

Emma Miller, a first-grade teacher, said, “So many of these are books I use in my classroom. It’s immersive and beautiful. I’m overwhelmed.”

As her toddler bolted toward “ Frog and Toad ,” Taylar Brown said, “We love opportunities to explore different sensory things for Mason. He has autism so this is a perfect place for him to find little hiding holes.”

A gaggle of boys reclined on a bean bag in “ Caps for Sale ,” passing around a copy of the book. Identical twins sounded out “ Bread and Jam for Frances ” on the pink rug in the badger’s house. A 3-year-old visiting for the second time listened to her grandfather reading “The Tawny Scrawny Lion.”

Tomy Tran, a father of three from Oklahoma, said, “I’ve been to some of these indoor places and it’s more like a jungle gym. Here, my kids will go into the area, pick up the book and actually start reading it as if they’re in the story.”

All the titles scattered around the museum are available for purchase at the Lucky Rabbit, a bookstore arranged around a cozy amphitheater. Pettid and Cowdin estimate that they’ve sold one book per visitor, with around 650 guests per day following the pink bunny tracks from the parking lot.

Once upon a time, Cowdin and Pettid owned the Reading Reptile, a Kansas City institution known not just for its children’s books but also for its literary installations. When Dav Pilkey came to town, Pettid and Cowdin welcomed him by making a three-and-a-half foot papier-mâché Captain Underpants. Young customers pitched in to build Tooth-Gnasher Superflash or the bread airplane from “In the Night Kitchen.”

One of the store’s devotees was Meg McMath, who continued to visit through college, long after she’d outgrown its offerings (and its chairs). Now 36, McMath traveled from Austin, Texas with her husband and six-month-old son to see the Rabbit Hole. “I’ve cried a few times,” she said.

The Reading Reptile weathered Barnes & Noble superstores and Amazon. Then came “the Harry Potter effect,” Pettid said, “where all of a sudden adults wanted kids to go from picture books to thick chapter books. They skipped from here to there; there was so much they were missing.”

As parents fell under the sway of reading lists for “gifted” kids, story time became yet another proving ground.

“It totally deformed the reading experience,” Cowdin said. Not to mention the scourge of every bookstore: surreptitious photo-snappers who later shopped online.

In 2016, Cowdin and Pettid closed the Reptile to focus on the Rabbit Hole, an idea they’d been percolating for years. They hoped it would be a way to spread the organic bookworm spirit they’d instilled in their five children while dialing up representation for readers who had trouble finding characters who looked like them. The museum would celebrate classics, forgotten gems and quality newcomers. How hard could it be?

Cowdin and Pettid had no experience in the nonprofit world. They knew nothing about fund-raising or construction. They’re ideas people, glass half full types, idealists but also stubborn visionaries. They didn’t want to hand their “dream” — a word they say in quotes — to consultants who knew little about children’s books. Along the way, board members resigned. Their kids grew up. Covid descended. A tree fell on their house and they had to live elsewhere for a year. “I literally have told Pete I quit 20 times,” Pettid said.

“It has not always been pleasant,” Cowdin said. “But it was just like, OK, we’re going to do this and then we’re going to figure out how to do it. And then we just kept figuring it out.”

Little by little, chugging along like “ The Little Engine That Could ,” they raised $15 million and assembled a board who embraced their vision and commitment to Kansas City. They made a wish list of books — “Every ethnicity. Every gender. Every publisher,” Pettid said — and met with rights departments and authors’ estates about acquiring permissions. Most were receptive; some weren’t. (They now have rights to more than 70 titles.)

“A lot of people think a children’s bookstore is very cute,” Pettid said. “They have a small mind for children’s culture. That’s why we had to buy this building.”

For $2 million, they bought the factory from Robert Riccardi, an architect whose family operated a beverage distribution business there for two decades. His firm, Multistudio, worked with Cowdin and Pettid to reimagine the space, which sits on an industrial corner bordered by train tracks, highways and skyline views.

Cowdin and Pettid started experimenting with layouts. Eventually they hired 39 staff members, including 21 full-time artists and fabricators who made everything in the museum from some combination of steel, wood, foam, concrete and papier-mâché.

“My parents are movers and shakers,” Gloria Cowdin said. She’s the middle of the five siblings, named after Frances the badger’s sister — and, yes, that’s her voice reading inside the exhibit. “There’s never been something they’ve wanted to achieve that they haven’t made happen, no matter how crazy.”

During a sneak peek in December, it was hard to imagine how this semi-construction zone would coalesce into a museum. The 22,000 square foot fabrication section was abuzz with drills and saws. A whiteboard showed assembly diagrams and punch lists. (Under “Random jobs,” someone had jotted, “Write Christmas songs.”) The entryway and lower level — known as the grotto and the burrow — were warrens of scaffolding and machinery.

But there were pockets of calm. Kelli Harrod worked on a fresco of trees outside the “ Blueberries for Sal ” kitchen, unfazed by the hubbub. In two years as lead painter, she’d witnessed the Rabbit Hole’s steady growth.

“I remember painting the ‘ Pérez and Martina ’ house before there was insulation,” Harrod said. “I was bundled up in hats, gloves and coats, making sure my hands didn’t shake.”

Leigh Rosser was similarly nonplused while describing his biggest challenge as design fabrication lead. Problem: How to get a dragon and a cloud to fly above a grand staircase in “ My Father’s Dragon .” Solution: “It’s really simple, conceptually” — it didn’t sound simple — “but we’re dealing with weight in the thousands of pounds, mounted up high. We make up things that haven’t been done before, or at least that I’m not aware of.”

Attention to detail extends to floor-bound exhibits. The utensil drawer in “Blueberries for Sal” holds Pete Cowdin’s mother’s egg whisk alongside a jar containing a baby tooth that belonged to Cowdin and Pettid’s oldest daughter, Sally. The tooth is a wink at “ One Morning in Maine ,” an earlier Robert McCloskey book involving a wiggly bicuspid — or was it a molar? If dental records are available, Cowdin and Pettid have consulted them for accuracy.

“With Pete and Deb, it’s about trying to picture what they’re seeing in their minds,” said Brian Selznick , a longtime friend who helped stock the shelves in the Lucky Rabbit. He’s the author of “ The Invention of Hugo Cabret ,” among many other books.

Three months ago, the grotto looked like a desert rock formation studded with pink Chiclets. The burrow, home of Fox Rabbit, the museum’s eponymous mascot, was dark except for sparks blasting from a soldering iron. The floor was covered with tiny metal letters reclaimed from a newly-renovated donor wall at a local museum.

Cowdin and Pettid proudly explained their works-in-progress; these were the parts of the museum that blossomed from seed in their imaginations. But to the naked eye, they had the charm of a bulkhead door leading to a scary basement.

When the museum opened to the public, the grotto and the burrow suddenly made sense. The pink Chiclets are books, more than 3000 of them — molded in silicone, cast in resin — incorporated into the walls, the stairs and the floor. They vary from an inch-and-a-half to three inches thick. As visitors descend into the Rabbit Hole, they can run their fingers over the edges of petrified volumes. They can clamber over rock formations that include layers of books. Or they can curl up and read.

Dennis Butt, another longtime Rabbit Hole employee, molded 92 donated books into the mix, including his own copies of “ The Hobbit ” and “ The Lord of the Rings .” He said, “They’re a little piece of me.”

As for the metal letters, they’re pressed into the walls of a blue-lit tunnel leading up a ramp to the first floor. They spell the first lines of 141 books, including “ Charlotte’s Web ,” “Devil in the Drain” and “ Martha Speaks .” Some were easier to decipher than others, but “Mashed potatoes are to give everybody enough” jumped out. It called to mind another line from “A Hole is to Dig,” Ruth Krauss’s book of first definitions (illustrated by a young Maurice Sendak ): “The world is so you have something to stand on.”

At the Rabbit Hole, books are so you have something to stand on. They’re the bedrock and the foundation; they’re the solid ground.

Cowdin and Pettid have plans to expand into three more floors, adding exhibit space, a print shop, a story lab, a resource library and discovery galleries. An Automat-style cafeteria and George and Martha -themed party and craft room will open soon. A rooftop bar is also in the works.

Of course, museum life isn’t all happily ever after. Certain visitors whined, whinged and wept, especially as they approached the exit. One weary adult said, “Charlie, we did it all.”

Then, “Charlie, it’s time to go.”

And finally, “Fine, Charlie, we’re leaving you here.” Cue hysteria.

But the moral of this story — and the point of the museum, and maybe the point of reading, depending on who you share books with — crystallized in a quiet moment in the great green room. A boy in a Chiefs Super Bowl T-shirt pretended to fall asleep beneath a fleecy blanket. Before closing his eyes, he said, “Goodnight, Grandma. Love you to the moon.”

Elisabeth Egan is a writer and editor at the Times Book Review. She has worked in the world of publishing for 30 years. More about Elisabeth Egan

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