We now drive through the dusty roads of St. Jo, the observed of all observers, and presently find ourselves in the steam ferry which is to convey us from the right to the left bank of the Missouri River. The “ Big Muddy,” as it is now called—the Yellow River of old writers—venerable sire of snag and sawyer, displays at this point the source whence it has drawn for ages the dirty brown silt which pollutes below their junction the pellucid waters of the “Big Drink.’ It runs, like the lower Indus, through deep walls of stiff clayey earth, and, like that river, its supplies, when filtered (they have been calculated to contain one eighth of solid matter), are sweet and wholesome as its brother streams. The Plata of this region, it is the great sewer of the prairies, the main, channel and common issue of the water-courses and ravines which have carried on the work of denudation and degradation for days dating beyond the existence of Egypt.

See Adieu to St. Jo for Burton's account of crossing the river.

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Two steam ferries, known as the Bellemont Ferry and the Ellwood Ferry, transported travellers, including Pony Express riders, across the Missouri River from Missouri to Kansas. [5] Reportedly, the boat docked at either Jules or Francis Streets in St. Joseph. [6] A monument, located along the shoreline of the Missouri River in Hustan Wyeth Park, represents the original site of the ferry crossing.   https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/poex/hrs/hrs4a.htm

Before the mid-1950s, the Missouri River made a bend to the west at St. Joseph and to the bluffs on the west side of the river.  A good landing site was at the western end of the bend. The ferries that operated there had different names at different times.  The last used name was Bellemont – beginning in 1858 into the early 1900s.  During the latter years, the Bellemont Kansas Steam Ferry Company ran a ferry from Bellemont to Frenchville (refers to French Bottoms, a settlement in the flood plains in Buchanan County, Missouri.)  Although, some early maps show the Bellemont ferry as also running from the wharf at St. Joseph upriver for four miles to the town of Bellemont.  The town no longer exists, but at one time it was the temporary county seat of Doniphan County.https://www.gateway-octa.org/bellemont-landing