Columbia Steamboat Disaster

One of the worst disasters in the history of United States inland navigation occurred at midnight, Friday, July 5, 1918 when the excursion steamboat Columbia, returning to Pekin from an excursion in Peoria, struck a sand bar and sank into the Illinois River near Wesley City (present day Creve Coeur) with 496 passengers (mostly from Pekin).  Eighty-seven passengers, mostly women and children, drowned in the submerged wreckage.

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