The Belle of Louisville is a 1914 steamboat that still operates on the Ohio River, making her the oldest working Mississippi River-style steamboat in the world. She runs public excursions from the downtown riverfront, including sightseeing cruises, dinner cruises, and the famous Derby Eve race against the Spirit of Jefferson that has been a Louisville tradition since 1963.
A trip on the Belle is one of the genuinely old-fashioned pleasures Louisville has to offer — the boat moves at walking pace, the calliope plays on the upper deck, and the city's skyline looks different from the river than from the bank. Even on a short sightseeing cruise you get a sense of why Louisville existed where it does: the Falls of the Ohio, just downstream, were the only significant break in the river for a thousand miles, forcing goods to be unloaded and portaged, and creating the settlement that became this city.