The ''Iron Mountain'' was a

stern-wheeler A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine that drives paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, where the first uses were w ...

that plied the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

for ten years until sinking in 1882. Built in 1872 on the Ohio River at

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

, the boat was long and had a beam. The ship ran aground and sank in 1882. However, a common legend claims that it mysteriously disappeared.

Sinking

The ''Iron Mountain'' sailed from Vicksburg on March 25, 1882, and hit an obstruction at Stumpy Point, near Island 102, which holed her hull and sank her. The crew scrambled onto one of the barges and escaped. Ellen Anderson, a chambermaid/ship stewardess, was caught below decks and killed. Her body was recovered the next day with some wreckage, but there was no sign of the ship. Further wreckage was found on June 30, several miles from where the boat was lost. The sinking of the ship was reported locally, with articles appearing in the March 27 edition of the Vicksburg ''Daily Commercial'', and the March 28 issue of the ''Daily Memphis Avalanche''. The ship was not found until later, having apparently been refloated by flood waters and carried through a break in a levee, and grounded in a cotton field at Omega Landing, near

Tallulah, Louisiana Tallulah is a city in and the parish seat of Madison Parish in northeastern Louisiana, United States. The 2010 population was 7,335, a decrease of 1,854, or 20.2 percent, from the 9,189 recorded at the 2000 census. As this was historically a ...

Legend

A common legend claims that it was travelling from

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

, loaded with cotton and sugar, when it disappeared. It sailed from

Vicksburg, Mississippi Vicksburg is a historic city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the county seat, and the population at the 2010 census was 23,856. Located on a high bluff on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from Louisiana, Vi ...

, and headed north, towing a string of barges and with 55 crew and passengers aboard. Another steamer, the '' Iroquois Chief'', found the ''Iron Mountain''s barges floating downriver, apparently having been cut loose, but the ship itself had vanished. This legend is often repeated as fact, as in Frank Edward's 1956 book, ''Strangest of All'', Paul Begg's ''Into Thin Air'' (1979), the

Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wif ...

's ''Mysteries of the Unexplained'' (1982),

Louis L'Amour Louis Dearborn L'Amour (; né LaMoore; March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was an American novelist and short story writer. His books consisted primarily of Western novels (though he called his work "frontier stories"); however, he also wrote hi ...

's '' The Haunted Mesa'' (1987),

Charles Berlitz Charles Frambach Berlitz (November 22, 1913 – December 18, 2003) was an American polyglot, language teacher and writer, known for his language-learning courses and his books on paranormal phenomena. Life Berlitz was born in New York City. He w ...

's ''World of Strange Phenomena'' (1988) and Herbie Brennan's ''Seriously Weird True Stories'' (1997). Most versions of the story give the date of the "disappearance" as 1872, which was the year of the ship's launching.

In popular culture

The legend was indirectly shown in the 2011

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

Western film The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referred ...

'' Cowboys and Aliens''. In this film there is a scene where a

posse Posse is a shortened form of posse comitatus, a group of people summoned to assist law enforcement. The term is also used colloquially to mean a group of friends or associates. Posse may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Posse'' (1975 ...

discover an upturned Mississippi riverboat in the middle of the desert in

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ...

. Although the boat's name is not shown or mentioned, it is presumed that it is the ''Iron Mountain'' that was dropped there by the extraterrestrials.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Iron Mountain 1872 ships Ships built in Pittsburgh Shipwrecks of the Mississippi River Steamboats of the Mississippi River Maritime incidents in March 1882 Ice trade Legendary ghost ships American folklore