NATCHEZ — Young girls and boys waved in the American Queen Monday in hoop skirts and ascots.

Local Letta Crocker, in a spring-green antebellum dress, jiggled a matching parasol to the tune of old jazz music performed by the Natchez High School Band.

Tourists de-boarded the boat with their digital cameras, snapping photos of adults donning Civil War-era garb and even a Mark Twain look alike.

Regina Charboneau, local Bed and Breakfast operator and culinary director for the American Queen, said it wasn’t just the costumes that made the arrival uniquely Natchez.

Glimpsing Natchez Under-the-Hill just after sunrise from the steamboat after coming around a bend in the Mississippi River, Charboneau said, was like a mix of the ages.

“It’s just like going back in time,” Charboneau said. “It’s spectacular.”

Despite bouts of rain earlier that day and the early morning hour, when tourists climbed the ramp at the Natchez landing for the inaugural visit of the American Queen, they were greeted with many a genuine “Good morning.”

Great American Steamboat CEO Jeffrey Krida said his company has been eager to offer this confusion of the ages with trips to Natchez since 2008.

“When the Delta Queen stopped sailing in 2008, that was the first time in 200 years that there hadn’t been an overnight steamboat stopping (annually) in Natchez,” Krida said.

“So we fixed that.”

For Krida and local leaders, the partially costumed reunion was not just a return to the days when cotton was king, but of just a few years ago when the tourism industry got a welcomed boost when droves of tourists docked beneath the bluff.