Throwback Thursday:

May 29, 1924

YANKTON, S.D. — Do you want to know anything about the whims and vagaries of the Missouri River? 

Then take a trip to Yankton and when you are crossing the river on the ferry boat, the B. A. Douglass, go up into the pilot house and talk with Captain Joe Giesler, who is celebrating his twenty-fifth year as the captain of the ferry this month. 

Captain Giesler is the oldest licensed pilot on the Missouri river anywhere in the northwest, and what he doesn’t know about that stream could be written across the face of a postage stamp without canceling it. He has battled with the stream in summer and winter, he has studied it as a person would study a book, and as far as is possible for any human being he has “learned” the Missouri river. To a novice the task of piloting the ferry looks like something which the ordinary man would never attempt. The swift current of the stream, the numerous sandbars, the floating logs and trees which are a menace to navigation, and countless other dangers must all be avoided, for often the boat has a precious cargo of human lives and property.