Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The first western steamboat had been launched from Pittsburgh in 1811, appropriately named the New Orleans. Converting corn to pork made it more efficient to transport. Cincinnati on the Ohio became a meatpacking center nicknamed 'Porkopolis,' turning hogs into ham and lard for shipment hundreds or thousands of miles by water." [Howe: What Hath God Wrought, p. 138] "In 1787, John Fitch had built the first American steamer, but he could not obtain financial backing and died in obscurity. The first commercially successful steamboat, Robert Fulton's Clermont, plied the Hudson River starting in 1807. . . . In 1817, a twenty-five day steamer trip up the Mississippi from New Orleans to Louisville set a record; by1826, the time had been cut to eight days. . . . the dredging of rivers and harbors became one of the most important kinds of internal improvement that state and federal authorities undertook in this period. For all their utility, nineteenth-century steamboats were dangerous. . . . Congress responded that year with the first federal regulation, warranted by the interstate commerce clause. From then on, every steamboat boiler had to bear a certificate from a government inspector." [Howe: What Hath God Wrought, p. 214-5]