Louisville is as old a port of the United States as New York or
Philadelphia, having been so created when our government was
established in 1789, but oddly enough the first returns to the
National Treasury (1798) are credited to the port of Palmyra,
Tennessee, far inland on the Cumberland River. In 1799 the
following Western towns were made ports of entry: Erie, Sandusky,
Detroit, Mackinaw Island, and Columbia (Cincinnati). The first
port on the Ohio to make returns was Fort Massac, Illinois, and
it is from the collector at this point that we get our first hint
as to the character and volume of Western river traffic. In the
spring months of March, April, and May, 1800, cargoes to the
value of 28,581 pounds, Pennsylvania currency, went down the
Ohio. This included 22,714 barrels of flour, 1017 barrels of
whiskey, 12,500 pounds of pork, 18,710 pounds of bacon, 75,814
pounds of cordage, 3650 yards of country linen, 700 bottles, and
700 barrels of potatoes. In the three autumn months of 1800, for
instance, twenty-one boats ascended the Ohio by Fort Massac, with
cargoes amounting to 36 hundredweight of lead and a few hides.
Descending the river at the same time, flatboats and barges
carried 245 hundredweight of drygoods valued at $32,550. When we
compare these spring and fall records of commerce downstream we
reach the natural conclusion that the bulk of the drygoods which
went down in the fall of the year had been brought over the
mountains during the summer. The fact that the Alleghany
pack-horses and Conestogas were transporting freight to supply
the Spanish towns on the Mississippi River in the first year of
the nineteenth century seems proved beyond a doubt by these
reports from Fort Massac.