The steamboat now extended its service to the West and North. The ancient fur trade with the Indians of the upper Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Arkansas, had its headquarters at St. Louis, whence the notable band of men engaged in that trade were reaching out to the Rockies. The roll includes Ashley, Campbell, Sublette, Manuel Lisa, Perkins, Hempstead, William Clark, Labadie, the Chouteaus, and Menard--men of different races and colors and alike only in their energy, bravery, and initiative. Through them the village of St. Louis had grown to a population of four thousand in 1819, when Major Long's expedition passed up the Missouri in the first steamboat to ascend that river. This boat, the Western Engineer, was built at Pittsburgh and was modeled cunningly for its work. It was one of the first stern wheelers built in the West; and the saving in width meant much on streams having such narrow channels as the Missouri and the Platte, especially when barges were to be towed. Then, too, its machinery, which was covered over or boarded up, was shrouded in mystery. A fantastic figure representing a serpent's open mouth contained the exhaust pipe. If the New Orleans alarmed the population of the Ohio Valley, the sensation caused among the red children of the Missouri at the sight of this gigantic snake belching fire and smoke must have thoroughly satisfied the whim of its designer. The admission of Missouri to statehood and the independence of Mexico mark the beginning of real commercial relations between St. Louis and Santa Fé. In 1822 Captain William Becknell organized the first wagon train which left the Missouri (at Franklin, near Independence) for the long dangerous journey to the Arkansas and on to Santa Fé. In the following year two expeditions set forth, carrying out cottons and other drygoods to exchange for horses, mules, furs, and silver. Despite the handicaps of Indian opposition and Mexican tariffs, the Santa Fé trade became an important factor in the growth of St. Louis and the Missouri River steamboat lines. In 1825 the pathway was "surveyed" from Franklin to San Fernando, then in Mexico. This Santa Fé trade grew from fifteen thousand pounds of freight in 1822 to nearly half a million pounds twenty years later.