The Josephine was a paddlewheel steamship built in 1873 by the Coulson Packet Company of Philadelphia.  The boat was named for Josephine Stanley, daughter of General David Stanley.  Grant Marsh captained the boat.  The Josephine carried 300 tons of cargo and drew only 20 inches of water, which made her an ideal vessel to explore shallow western rivers.  Marsh boasted he could sail his boats anywhere there had been heavy dew.  Under orders of from General Phil Sheridan, Captain Marsh took the Josephine up the Tongue, Rosebud, Big Horn and Yellowstone Rivers, making notes of the types of timber, soils, rapids and water levels along the way.  The journey proved it possible to bring supplies to frontier troops by water during high water stages, a significant finding for generals deciding whether to send expeditions against the Sioux.

Lake Josephine in modern-day Riverfront Park is named for the boat, which tied up to a cottonwood tree on the bank.  Though there was some interest in preserving the tree as a memorial, it eventually washed downstream in a flood.

According to field notes of the 1878 survey in Billings BLM office, in June 1875 the Josephine actually got upstream quite a distance above what is now Riverfront Park.  The Josephine remained in service until damaged by ice in South Dakota in 1907.  Her bell was salvaged and is now in the Peter Yegen Jr. Yellowstone County Museum by the airport.  A model of the ship, complete to Captain Grant’s “signature,” the elk antlers above the wheelhouse, is in the Montana Room at Parmly Billings Library.  The Josephine was the only steamer to reach the site of what would become Coulson.  Huntley was actually the head of navigation on the river, and the residents of Coulson traveled regularly to Huntley to pick up goods from the boats.  After the railroads arrived in 1882, steamboats only traveled on the Yellowstone as far as Glendive, and ceased altogether by 1910.

(Sources:  BG February 25, 1934, June 7, 1981; CN July 1982; HM; PBLS #7, pp. 106-107; SHOC)