[Photograph 2012.201.OVZ001.1406]

Photograph used for a story in the Daily Oklahoman newspaper. Caption: "A cheering crowd jammed the dock at Tulsa's Port of Catoosa Wednesday afternoon for the heralded arrival of 650 tons of Tennessee newsprint-first commercial shipment to reach the new $20 million port. The other Oklahoma port on the vast $1.2 billion Arkansas-Verdigris Navigation System, the Port of Muskogee, will be dedicated at 4 p.m. Friday. Arrival of the first barge at Muskogee and Catoosa, head for navigation for the 440-mile system, marked an historic occasion, the return of river trade on the Arkansas after a lapse of almost a century. The treachous river and the advent of the railroad at the close of the 19th century put commercial steamboats out of business. Commercial traffic on the waterway also means the fulfillment fo "an impossible dream" for Oklahomans, the realization of a project authorized 24 years ago and prodded into reality by the late Robert S. Kerr, U. S. Senator from Oklahoma, and other project boosters......The barge arrived at Muskogee at 11 a.m. Wednesday and went through Lock and Dam 18, seven miles south of Inola, at 5 p.m. Wednesday.....The barge and its pushing towboat led a flotilla of boats, including private boats, to the new port.