Big Mama's spoon
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Owner:
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tdecell
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Released:
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Thursday, January 26, 2006
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Origin:
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Mississippi, United States
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Recently Spotted:
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In Bee Tree Park
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Travel up and down the "Mighty Mississippi River" like I used to. Have my picture taken with other riverboats along the way. I would really like to make it down to Vicksburg, where I spent my last days.....
The “Sprague” was the largest steam powered towboat ever built. The Sprague pushed barges on the Lower Mississippi River for the Monongahela River Consolidated Coal and Coke Co. for many years before being sold to the Esso Corp. of Baton Rouge to move petroleum barges on the Mississippi.
The hull of the Sprague was completed in 1901 at the Iowa Iron Works in Dubuque. The cabins were completed by the middle of 1902, and the nearly complete boat was moved to St. Louis, where the 40-foot propulsion wheel was attached. The move was necessary because the locks on the Upper Mississippi River were not large enough to accommodate the full 318-foot length of the boat known as "Big Mama."
On April 15th, 1974, fire broke out aboard the boat and when everything was over, all but the hull and most of the steel superstructure was destroyed.
In 1948, the Sprague was officially retired and the City of Vicksburg acquired the Sprague from the Standard Oil Corp. There are a few artifacts remaining with the largest being one of the steering rudders, which was removed when the boat was stripped of its boilers, and the rusting framework of the propulsion wheel. The rudder and some smaller parts are on a lot near City Front, and Vicksburg officials have plans to include them in a development of the area into an art park, a steamboat playground and the old Levee Street Depot.
This spoon was “rescued” from the wreckage along with a couple of other artifacts after the fire.
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