During the Great Depression, as many as 50,000 people lived on an estimated 30,000 shanty boats in the Ohio and Mississippi River basins. Louisville's floating shanty boat neighborhood was part of a changing waterfront for more than a century as the city evolved from a river town into an industrial city. This program explores shanty boat Louisville at the beginning of the 1900s. Who were the shanty boaters and why did they chose this alternative form of housing? Why were city officials determined to rid the waterfront of these "squatty little shanties, half house, half boat"? And what factors combined to bring an end to what one newspaperman called "these picturesque river tramps" at Louisville's "Point" neighborhood? Dr. Mark Wetherington is the former Director and Senior Research Fellow at The Filson Historical Society. He received his B.A. and Master’s degrees in history at Georgia Southern and earned a Ph.D. in history in1985 from the University of Tennessee. He is the author of The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860 and Plain Folk’s Fight: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Piney Woods, Georgia.