DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the tale as the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna let it breathe the way it deserves. Now picture it — the winter of 1850 rolling into 1851, and somewhere out on Little River, something is happening that has never happened before and, as it turns out, will never happen again. The Steamboat Washington is coming.
Captain Basil M. Hatfield at the helm, pushing a load of merchandise upriver from Washington-on-the-Brazos, bound for J. W.
McCown and Co., merchants out of Cameron, Milam County. A steamboat. On Little River.
That right there ought to tell you something. Because Little River is not exactly what you'd call a grand commercial waterway. It is, to put it gently, little.
And yet here comes Captain Hatfield, churnin along, delivering his shipment of merchandise like it's the most natural thing in the world. He made it. The Washington landed.
The goods reached J. W. McCown and Co.
Mission accomplished. And then — and this is the part that sticks with you — nobody ever did it again. Not before, not after.
The Steamboat Washington holds the distinction, all by itself, of being the first, the last, and the only steamboat to navigate Little River. One trip. One captain.
One delivery. And a river that apparently decided once was enough. Some records get made that nobody ever tries to break.
This is one of them.
What the marker says
In the winter of 1850-1851 with Captain Basil M. Hatfield, commander, the Steamboat Washington landed here with a shipment of merchandise from Washington-on-the-Brazos to J. W. McCown and Co., merchants at Cameron. The first, last and only steamboat to navigate Little River.