The Delta Queen is the last major passenger-carrying steamboat still operating on the rivers of middle America. She is the only living representative of those glamorous years when the Mississippi and Ohio rivers were alive with show-boats and packets; when steam-boats were filled with crystal chandeliers and carved staircases, gamblers and fine ladies, and on every riverbank small boys raced to raise the cry 'steamboat a-comin'!'
In 1970 two Americans, John and Deborah La Gorce II, rode The Delta Queen 10,000 miles into the heart of their own country. Their dream was to film a part of the American heritage that is in danger of vanishing. For The Delta Queen, herself, was under sentence but, in the last hours of 1970, President Nixon signed a reprieve.
The film celebrates the heyday of steamboating with steamboat races, charts the vicissitudes of the rivers with the Great Flood of 1937, and includes the Fourth of July Celebrations at Mark Twain's home town, and evocative scenes of Vicksburg and the Civil War.