Missouri’s U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt are pushing to bring the historic 1920s riverboat Delta Queen back to the Mississippi River. Proposed legislation would reinstate a decades-long exemption to allow the boat to operate from its new home port of Kimmswick in Jefferson County, just off I-55 along the Mississippi River south of St. Louis.
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This is no small thing and goes beyond the romantic, the historic or just for the tourist. Ambassadors International listed the ship for sale beginning in late 2008 at a price of $4.75 million!
By expanding the riverboat’s operations, more than 100 jobs will be created.
It is expected that the Delta Queen will begin and end a number of its cruises each year in Kimmswick and will visit more than 80 other ports in the United States.
But, of course, the Delta Queen really is all about the romantic, the historic and tourism. In September, 2013, the National Trust for Historic Preservation honored it as a “National Treasure.” Congress then gave a vote on giving the Delta Queen an exemption to allow it to travel the rivers again in 2013, but today the Delta Queen is fully compliant with Coast Guard safety regulations, including the requirement to annually modify at least 10% of the wooden portions of the vessel’s superstructure to comply with the federal safety law requirements.
Things look good. In January, the proposed legislation was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee. The bill now heads to the full Senate for approval.
Any boat this old has a checkered past. Ownership of the boat has changed seven times over the last 50 years. Ambassadors International listed the ship for sale beginning in late 2008 at a price of $4.75 million. The Delta Queen was eventually bought by the newly formed Delta Queen Steamboat Company in early 2015.
The romance, of course, is to bring an authentic paddlewheel steamboat of Mark Twain’s America back to life. Riverboats are promoted as genteel, floating antebellum mansions. Every evening showboat-style entertainment or dance unfolds, including swing, big band or Dixieland jazz music.
Perhaps you’re like me. I’ve never actually lived along the river. Some might describe my house today, less than two miles from a bend in the Grand River, as an older home in a sleepy, backwater town more defined by long abandoned railroads than its waterway. But the 226-mile Grand River contributes significantly to the Muddy Mo by the time it empties down at Brunswick.
The closest riverboat port to us here in Daviess County once was at Lexington or perhaps St. Joseph. The closest steamboat museums we can visit today is the Steamboat Arabia, which sank in the Missouri River in 1856. Relics from that doomed shipment are on display in downtown Kansas City.
Every riverboat has its story.
There are those who say the label “Midwest” defies definition. But to me, the tributaries feeding the Ohio, the Missouri and Mississippi define the Midwest. It goes beyond the riverfronts. It’s the vast area that all these water arteries of commerce, culture and history serve. The waters feeding the land of the riverboat defines Midwest.
Today shore excursions by “Steamcoach” explore the many towns and cities along America’s natural highways. Cruises offer daily lectures from an onboard river historian, while special theme voyages feature topics as varied as the Civil War, fall colors and the music of the 1950s and 1960s.
I’m happy over what I read about the future of the Delta Queen. But in my daydreams, she would not be my first choice. The riverboat I most want to see is the Jim Johnson.
During the years raising our kids, we regularly drove down Highway 13 to cross the Missouri River at Lexington to visit the family farm. We’d all hold our breath going across the old river truss bridge that no longer exists, the kids playing the game of who could hold their breath the longest while we adults, looking at all the rust, held our breaths for other reasons.
We’d play CDs featuring folk song artists lauding Missouri on those trips, a favorite song being “The Jim Johnson:”
…”40 rubber boilers and a 40-hinged hull,
40 big smoke stacks a hundred feet tall,
She had four big side wheels, two at the stern.
A paddle took a day just to make a full turn.”
You can glean tidbits from old newspapers throughout the Midwest describing fictional steamboats, especially those about the biggest steamboats of their golden era in the mid-1800s. On the Mississippi, legend says it was the Hurricano; others laud the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee. But on the Missouri, at least from old Boonville newspaper accounts, it was the Jim Johnson.
By musical lore, people would come gawk at the boat from miles around because it took the Jim Johnson “two weeks just to pass by a town.” The song claims the Jim Johnson ate enough wood on an average run “to build 50 courthouses and a good sized town.” With all on board she could “declare herself an independent, floating state.”
The pilot of this boat was a mighty mean man, weighed 700 pounds and stood 8-feet-10. He had one good eye in the middle of his head “and a voice that could raise up people from the dead.”
So, yes, I’m pulling for the revival and future of the triple-deck Delta Queen. But, my friends, the Jim Johnson would be the steamboat truly worth seeing…
“Look out boys, she’s a’comin’ up the river and
Oh, Lordy, she’s a’buildin’ up steam…
Good God, she’s as big as a mountain
She’s the biggest damn steamboat I ever have seen.”
Purely for Tourism…
For a few years, there have been rumors about the ghost of Mary Greene haunting the Delta Queen. She was the wife of Greene Line founder Gordon C. Greene and a riverboat captain in her own right. She died aboard the boat on April 22, 1949. Guests and employees have reported sounds and activity on board which they attribute to her spirit, particularly around her former quarters.