In 1848 a ferry was put in on the Missouri River at St. Joseph. As a result emigrant travel on the St. Joseph Road, the northern branch of the Oregon Trail, increased greatly. The St. Joseph road joined the military road a short distance outside Marysville to the east. Travel on this route was extremely heavy during the years between 1848 and 1850, and many journals of travelers described the ford at the future site of Marysville. Then in the spring of 1851 there was severe flooding on the Big Blue, making it impossible to use the ford. Critical military supplies lay on the east bank for weeks. Emigrant travel was delayed as well.
A Ferry at the Ford
Francis J. Marshall, a freighter and hotel keeper from Weston, Missouri, had asked the Pawnee Indian agent and Army authorities at Fort Leavenworth for a permit to build a ferry and trading post at the crossing on the military road. The permit was at first denied, because the hunting grounds of the Pawnees extended into this area and Army authorities reasoned that any grouping of whites in one place could cause unrest among the Indians, especially undesirable when there was heavy traffic on the St. Joseph Road.
But after the high water of 1851, Marshall renewed his request, and on March 5, 1852, he was granted permission to establish a ferry and a license to trade with the Indians. The next day he started for the Big Blue. There he set up a rope ferry and built a log trading post, a blacksmith shop, and a few log cabins. This place was called “Marshall’s Ferry” until it became Marysville in 1854.
Ferries were needed mainly in the spring, when the river was up and western emigrant trains had to pass through in May or June in order to get to the Pacific coast before winter. In the first years in this area Marshall returned to his home in Weston, Missouri, in the fall and winter.
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