news
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Atlas Obscura: An Artist, a Shantyboat, and the Lost History of American River Communities
Wes Modes is documenting life along America’s waterways. Atlas ObscuraBy Jonathan CareyMarch 7, 2019 THE RIVERS OF THE UNITED States have a certain lore and mystique within American culture. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these roaring waterways were home to thousands. Entire communities existed on or near the water in self-made houseboats. The…
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Boating: Wes Modes, Artist/Documentarian/ Shanty Boater
Armed with a homemade shanty boat and a video camera, Wes Modes has spent the last few years floating down rivers big and small, all for his unique project: “A Secret History of American River People.”
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First Friday Santa Cruz: Secret History Project Tells Untold Stories of the San Lorenzo River
For local artist Wes Modes, this process of finding and sharing the stories of people’s relationships to rivers is a deeply powerful form of social practice—an art form that creates change through human interaction and conversation.
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HeraldWeekly: The Lost History of American River Communities, Revisited by an Artist in a Shantyboat
HeraldWeeklyby Mark Villanueva Wes Modes is documenting life along America’s waterways. American rivers used to be home to thousands of people, particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Families lived close to these silvery channels, traded, thrived, as chronicled initially by Harlan Hubbard’s Shantyboat Journal. These communities are mostly gone now, but the mystery of…
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Portsmouth Daily-Times: American River People
Portsmouth Daily-Timesby Ivy Potter Several artists have made their way to Portsmouth, courtesy of their rustic recreated shantyboat, to gather information and personal histories of those living along the Ohio River. The Secret History of American River People, the name of the project, operates to build a collection of personal stories of people who live…
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Gallipolis Daily Tribune: Shantyboaters seek river people secrets
Gallipolis Daily Tribuneby Dean Wright GALLIPOLIS — A trio of shantyboaters landed in Gallipolis Tuesday to speak with locals about the life and culture of the region as they continued a journey from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and on through Louisville, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. Jeremiah Daniels, Wes Modes and Adrian Nankivell are three companions floating…
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Clutch MOV: A Secret History of American River People
Clutch MOVby Sarah Arnold Though once abundant along the shores of the Ohio River, shantyboats are no longer a common sight. These small, crude houseboats were often built and lived in by itinerant workers, miners, dockworkers, and displaced agricultural workers during the late 19th century and into the 1940s, but largely disappeared from river life after…
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Marietta Times: Shantyboat historian spends time in Marietta
“It is so cool to be in that space, gathering that storytelling,” she said. “I knew a tiny bit about it before this, from the exhibit at the Ohio River Museum. It makes you realize that the river at one time was just thick with boats like that.”
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WTRF: “Shanty Boat” sails away today in Moundsville
According to Wes Modes, the project hopes to uncover the social and economic impacts that river people have had on their local communities and beyond.
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TVA bans new floating homes, but allows existing homes to stay
Since the 1950s, floating homes on the water have been an endangered species in the US. With the exception of those on city- or county-owned waters, boathouses are all but extinct on the Mississippi River. On Tennessee Valley Authority controlled waters in the Tennessee River watershed, floating homes are also endangered.
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Midwest Cultural Envy from a Californian
I arrive in the Quad Cities, towns with traces of their industrial history on every street, still full of life, rusty perhaps but not abandoned.
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![Small and Not So Small Town Press [Updated]](https://peoplesriverhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/5D3_0978_0-672x372.jpg)
Small and Not So Small Town Press [Updated]
We’ve done our best to try to let people know we are coming downriver. Some of the local press have picked up our story.
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La Crosse WXOW: 2 art students take journey in shantyboat on Mississippi
Two art students from California are traveling down the Mississippi River this month in a one of a kind boat, while working on a project called Secret History of the American River People.Wes Modes and Kai Dalgleish are both masters art students at the University of California Santa Cruz, floating down the river in a…
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La Crosse Tribune: Artist plies Mississippi in Shantyboat to net historical portraits
California-based artists Wes Modes and Kai Dalgleish are traveling down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to Davenport, Iowa, collecting oral histories and stories of river people. Modes, a grad student at University of California Santa Cruz, is doing the project for his master’s thesis. The Shantyboat, built largely from salvage from a chicken coop, is…
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Winona Post: History afloat down the river
It is August on Latsch Island, that beautiful time of year when everything moves a little slower, from the water that laps up the sides of boathouses, to the mellow hum of nearby cicadas. Inside a small shanty boat anchored off a sandy plot of land beside the Wagon Bridge, two people sit relaxed at…
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Minneapolis Star Tribune: Shantyboat heads down the Mississippi, gathering stories
The Mississippi River has changed in many ways over the past century, becoming cleaner, less industrial and less economically essential. But there are still places where the banks are lined with houseboats. “There’s folks who are river rats who’ve had their own river-rafting journeys starting in Minneapolis. Many of them have floated all the way…
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Hastings Star Gazette: California artist in shantyboat stops in Hastings during Mississippi River tour
Hastings Star Gazette/Pierce County Herald by Chad Richardson It’s not uncommon to see boats moored on the public dock in Hastings. There’s not much common about the boat that Wes Modes and Kai Dalgleish are traveling in, though. Their unique boat, which was parked in Hastings on July 30 and July 31, drew all kinds of…