In the time of the flatboats and the coming of the first steamboats documented so well through the early American navigational river guides, maps clearly indicated a future problem for St. Louis and its highly praised river harbor—the city was essentially on a peninsula which could become a remote island due to floods and other naturally occurring circumstances over time. The many islands and sand bars in the river were alarming testament in early maps.
The western pilot : containing charts of the Ohio River, and of the Mississippi from the mouth of the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, accompanied with directions for navigating the same, and a description of the towns on their banks, tributary streams, etc. Also, a variety of matter interesting to all who are concerned in the navigation of those rivers / by Samuel Cumings. Cincinnati : Morgan, Lodge and Fisher, printers, 1825.
