Two river crossings that could hardly be run more differently: a free state barge on the Illinois at Kampsville and a paid ferry across the Mississippi at Ste. Genevieve.
The first Midwest crossing on this site is an unusual one. At Kampsville, Illinois Route 108 runs down to the Illinois River and carries on by barge between Calhoun and Greene counties. IDOT operates it around the clock and all year, with no ticket office and no schedule, and in its returns to the federal ferry census the fare income is zero: the boat is paid for the way a road is.
The reason is the shape of the land. Calhoun County is a long, thinly settled peninsula between the Mississippi and the Illinois, and IDOT keeps a second free boat, the Brussels Ferry, at its southern tip. What halts the Kampsville barge is the river, either frozen in winter or running unusually high, and the Weather Service gauge at Hardin, downstream, is the figure worth watching. In the June 2019 flood the crossing kept working on shortened hours over gravel detours, which shows how much the county leans on it.
Further south, on the Mississippi itself, the Ste. Genevieve–Modoc ferry joins Missouri to Illinois on the opposite terms: drivers pay $20 each way, cards are not accepted, and high or unsafe water stops the boat.
| Kampsville ferry: a free Illinois River crossing that never shuts for the night | Vehicle ferry | Free |
| Ste. Genevieve–Modoc ferry: the paid Mississippi crossing between Chester and St. Louis | Vehicle ferry | Wed–Sat 6 a.m.–5:30 p.m., Sun 9 a.m.–5:30 p.m. |