The Arabia sank on the Missouri River in September 1856 with a full cargo of supplies destined for frontier stores across the American West. She lay forgotten at the bottom of the river for 132 years. When a family of treasure hunters excavated the site in 1988, they found something extraordinary: the river had shifted over the centuries, and the wreck was buried 28 feet underground in a Kansas farmer's field. Everything was preserved in the cold, oxygen-free mud — boots still in their boxes, bottles of perfume still fragrant, pickles still edible, a shipment of tools and hardware that had never been used.
The museum in Kansas City's River Market neighborhood displays this cargo in full, with the shipwreck artifacts arranged in a recreation of the boat's cargo hold. The scale of the collection is remarkable — 200 tons of goods representing the daily material life of frontier America. It is genuinely one of the most unusual and absorbing museums in the country, and it is family-run.