In August 1819, Maj. Stephen H. Long steered the first steamer into the Kansas River with his 30-ton boat "Western Engineer". He made it scarcely a mile up the river before turning back, citing mud bars from the recent floods. The mouth of the Kansas River in the West Bottoms area of Kansas City (at a longitude of 94 degrees 36 minutes West) was the basis for Missouri's western boundary from Iowa to Arkansas when it became a state in 1821 (Kansas entered the Union in 1861.) South of the Missouri River, that longitude still remains the boundary between Kansas and Missouri. North of the Missouri River, the state of Missouri extended its boundary further to the west in 1836 with the Platte Purchase. The river has moved slightly since this designation, but the state boundary has remained the same. This line is known as the Osage Boundary. From the 1840s through the early 1870s, the southern ridgelines of the lower section of the Kansas River were the beginnings of the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe trails as they left Kansas City. Beginning in 1854, steamboats operated regularly from Kansas City to Lawrence and Topeka, and sometimes as far as Manhattan, Junction City, and Fort Riley. This traffic continued through the territorial period and the early years of statehood, falling off rapidly about 1860. The last steamer to travel the Kansas was the Alexander Majors, which was chartered in 1866 to run between Kansas City and Lawrence until the railroad bridge at the mouth of the river, which had been destroyed by floods, could be rebuilt. This traffic into statehood gave the Kansas legal status as a navigable stream in the eyes of the Federal government. In the 1860s, the country's goods were increasingly transported by the extensive and comparatively efficient railroad system. On February 25, 1864, the state legislature declared the Kansas River nonnavigable, allowing railroad and bridge companies to build bridges and dams without restriction. The first train to operate in Kansas south of the Kansas River did so by crossing the river in Lawrence on November 1, 1867. This law remained in effect until 1913, when, after it had been characterized as "a crime against the public welfare of Kansas", it was finally repealed and the river's status was restored to a navigable stream. The status has not since changed, though modern commercial navigation on the river is largely confined to dredging. Recreation along the Kansas River includes fishing, canoeing and kayaking, and rowing. There are 18 public access points along the river.