Antebellum Jefferson, Texas: Everyday Life in an East Texas Town

13. Wharves

184 Wharves were uncommon because they were costly; and the great disparity between high-water and low-water levels on the waters of the Mississippi River and its tributaries presented special design problems . The vast majority of landings were of dirt and were accessed by steamboats through the simple procedure of running the bow into the shore and placing a plank between the boat and the shore. Jefferson was unusual in that it invested heavily in public and private wharves. The only other wharf in the vicinity of Jefferson was at Swanson’s Landing on Caddo Lake, but this was built specifically for the unloading of railroad iron for the Southern Pacific. Wharves are not mentioned in Jefferson’s articles of incorporation, which gave the town power to create ordinances to fix the place or places of landing and anchoring for all watercraft, to establish a system of inspection over persons employed by watercraft at the landing, to regulate the prices of draymen, and to “make all other regulations which may contribute to the better administration of the affairs of said corporation.” The ordinances that were published in March 1854 established license fees for draymen, prohibited fires within 100 yards of cotton sheds with the exception of recovering or discharging freight, established a Sabbath prohibition on the discharge of steamboat freights, and established a wharfage tax of $20 for every steamboat that arrived at the landing. In the terminology of the day, a wharfage tax did not necessarily refer to the existence of a wooden wharf, because such fees were also 13. Wharves 185 Wharves charged for dirt landings. Although Jefferson had a wooden wharf by the time the ordinances were published, the tax probably went back to early 1851—the 1854 ordinances were simply the published form of decisions that had previously been made by the town aldermen. Because bridges and ferries are mentioned in these documents, it is apparent that wharves were not topical when the town achieved and implemented its legal status, which was a surprising oversight. Prior to the erection of the first public wharf in 1854, the landing area was of sloped dirt. Because the main deck of steamboats ran only slightly above the water even when they were without freight, it was necessary to excavate perpendicular natural banks at an angle down to the low-water level. Otherwise, a boat arriving at a dirt landing during low water would have to extend a plank upward to reach the shore, which would have made it difficult to offload or onload freight. Consequently, graded banks sloping gradually down to the point of low water were standard for dirt landings. Grading of the dirt landing would have been the first public contribution to the improvement of the landing area. The landing area was composed of the warehouses surrounding the turning basin and the landing proper, which was referred to as the levee. Steamboats pushed as close to shore as possible at a 45-degree angle and ran a plank to the shore. Items were transported up and down the sloping bank by hand and were placed on a relatively flat area below Dallas, where they were picked up and deposited by drays that ran between the levee and the warehouses. Constant movement of deckhands, drays, and passengers on the levee produced highly eroded conditions that were dusty when it was dry and muddy when it was wet. Heavy rains produced deep mud that was nearly impassable . When a town decided to invest in greater efficiencies in freight movements, the choice was between cobblestones and wood. Cobblestones , for obvious reasons, had to follow the slope of the preexisting graded dirt landing. However, this was also the case for most wooden wharves because sloped wooden wharves avoided the problems of water-level fluctuations encountered by horizontal wharves. All of Jefferson ’s wharves where of the sloped wooden variety, following the 186 Antebellum Jefferson, Texas contour of the preexisting graded dirt landing. Pilings were driven to the land surface, and planks were secured to timber undersupports that ran from the water’s edge uphill. This design enabled wharf access during low-water periods and during higher-water periods when the lower portion of the wharf was inundated. Public Wharf Jefferson’s first public wooden wharf was completed in early 1854, with construction probably begun in the summer of 1853. It is first mentioned as functional in the March...