Low Bridges

Judy,

The cars are a bit preplexing to me. I should leave this to our resident car buffs. However, my guess is the wagon is a 1957(8) Chevy Nomad and the coupe infront of it is also a 1957, I am thinking based on the rounded tail light, a Oldsmobile 88. It seems to me the Pontiac version had more of a bullet styled tail light and the Chevrolet and Cadillac had almost rocket shaped tail lights (The Caddy having duals on each side). General Motors was notorious in those days of having the exact same car at each brands dealership with very subtle visual cues as differences between models...well, engines and onboard kit, too.

So if I had to date the pic, I would say the late 1950's.

The boat only had the dark frame on the Main deck rail for a short period...and I also remember that to be the late 1950's.

Again another however...in the late 1950's the Underwood brothers painted the forward mast (kingpost) and boom mast Corps beige, it is white in this pic which would almost intonate to me the early 1960's when Capt. Wagner came on. He undid the mast colour and went back to white.

That is my take on it...I can't wait to hear others take...'cause pictures like this lead to such great conversations on here!

~Travis~

White Station wagon, 1958, car forward may be a 53 or 54 Olds. Second Picture 55 Chevorlet. The big Snickers bar on the 58 Station Wagon.

The date of Judy's photo at Winona would have been September 1962. I have a shot of the DELTA QUEEN below Lock 11 at Dubuque taken on Saturday, September 15, 1962, where she prominently displays the NO LOW BRIDGES banner. It was not there in her 1963 season. My scanner is currently inoperable, and so when Jonathan gets home from work this evening I'll see if he can help me post that shot, along with two others I snapped that Saturday morning as the boat entered Lock 11. That was Capt. Wagner and Hawley's first UMR trip on the DQ, having been up here the previous season on the AVALON. In those days, the DQ made but one St. Paul cruise a season: a 20-day round trip from Cincinnati. She always departed Cincinnati on the Saturday after Labor Day, arrived in St. Louis the following Wednesday, and was at Dubuque one week after leaving Cinci, on a Saturday morning. Sunday morning was always a shore stop at La Crosse for church, where residents of the city invariably showed up to take passengers uptown to services. She arrived at St. Paul Monday morning, laid over all day, and usually departed at midnight Monday. She would have stopped at Winona on Tuesday during the southbound leg of the trip. I will even venture to say that the pilots when Judy's picture was taken were Capt. Walt Karnath of Winona and Charlie Fehlig of Hot Springs, AK. Cal Benefiel of Madison, IN, would have been Chief. The crowds at every UMR landing and lock back then were huge, regardless of the time of day or night. Keep in mind, this was the ONLY steamboat to run up here at that time, she was the biggest steamer people up here had ever seen (unless they'd been to St. Louis to ride the ADMIRAL) and she made only this ONE appearance each fall. Thanks for bringing back some wonderful memories with those photos.

Well, Judy, you have opened a wave of memories (as usual) with your posting about the DQ's NO LOW BRIDGES banner on the UMR. Here's an "update" on my posting of several minutes ago. First, it's a good thing I hadn't taken bets on the names of the two pilots. Although Capts. Karnath and Fehlig were long-time UMR trip pilots on the DQ, one of them was not aboard that year. And, I have apparently mislabeled the date on my photos. Here's the latest scoop. Two identical pictures of the DQ with that banner appeared in the Waterways Journal. And here are the captions which appeared with each photo.

"NO LOW BRIDGES pleads this banner carried by the overnight tourist steamer Delta Queen on her upper Mississippi trip this fall. The banner visualizes the year-long fight of the river industry against hampering upper river traffic by constructing low clearance bridges across the Mississippi at LaCrosse, Wis., and LeClaire, Iowa." This caption appeared in the end-of-year review issue at Christmas 1961.

The second caption accompanied the same photo earlier that fall. It reads: "NO LOW BRIDGES" pleads a banner across the tourist steamer Delta Queen, which would be affected by the proposed lowering of clearances of bridges on the upper Mississippi. The vessel is pictured above at Winona, Minn., on September 17 [on her northbound leg of the cruise], carrying the banner. Returning from St. Paul, the Delta Queen arrived in St. Louis at 8 a.m. on September 23, under command of Capt. Merton Hatfield, and remained until 4 p.m. that day. The boat was piloted on the upper river by Capts. Charles Fehlig and Archie Maples. The latter got off at St. Louis, as did E. Jay Quinby, chairman of the board of the Greene Line Steamers, Inc., which operates the Delta Queen. Approximately 145 passengers were aboard when the Delta Queen left St. Louis to return to Cincinnati. L. A. Dallalio and George Hill, both of Cincinnati, were manning the purser's office in the absence of Robert H. (Bob) McCann, who left the boat at Nauvoo, Ill., to attend the meeting of the Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen in Marietta, Ohio."

Because this photo was taken in 1961, and not 1962 as I had stated, Capt. Wagner was still master over on the AVALON. Archie Maples had been a long-time AVALON pilot up here also, and was aboard the AVALON earlier that summer with David Whitney of Dubuque. I have relabeled my shot of the DQ Saturday, September 16, 1961. The other two shots of the boat entering Lock 11 were indeed taken in 1962, however, and I'll still try to get them posted later tonight. Posting on this message board sometimes brings out the Sherlock Holmes in us . . .

Thanks for looking up the facts. Their concern over the bridge at LeClaire was valid - that's the one I mentioned is 60.5, the I-80. Its design is the same as the one at Prairie, so when the PduC one had some problems several years ago, they checked our I 80 as well. Coincidentally, it is now down to 2 lanes as they've found weaknesses in the 2 outside lanes and are correcting those. Seems to me the biggest danger the old DELTA faces is Oberstar's bridges collapsing on her!!!!!! Wasn't the Winona landing beautiful pre-concrete contractor's bonanza??? It was one of the prettiest, and of course was always filled with people when we landed. An aside to docking in Winona: only Dan Forman would have noticed this: the watertower which is/was upstream was lettered so that at our angle all we could read was
W I N O....

Captain Blum, It's a 1958 Chevy wagon in the picture...a base version as it only has one taillight on each side.
A Picture Review of the Chevrolet from1947-1958

Below are three pictures I snapped at Dubuque on the morning of Sept. 15, 1962. The month and year is still stamped on the edge of the original print, and so my first date that I posted does appear to be correct after all. The only way I can reconcile my date for the NO LOW BRIDGES banner on the DQ's sundeck railing and the one given by the WJ, is that the boat carried that banner on the UMR both years. I did not take any photos of the boat in 1961. I saw her for the first time that September on her SB trip at about 7:00 or 8:00 at night as she was departing Dubuque. I do know E. J. Quinby was aboard that night because I also heard her calliope for the first time that night, and remember him playing "Row, Row, Row, Way Down the River" and "The Band Played On." At the time all this was taking place, Judy is correct in stating that the planning for interstate highway bridges at Le Claire and north of La Crosse was being done. The I-80 bridge down at Le Claire subsequently set the minimum vertical clearance above normal pool at 60 feet for new bridge construction.

David,

I love that stern shot! She still has her original camber and sheer and is absolutley beautiful!

~Travis~

She did lose a lot of her gracefulness with the new hull. Wish that could be fixed, but right now more important to keep her running!
S'
David D.

Okay, Travis -- here are a couple more shots from the next two years. The first one is Sept. 1963 at Bellevue, IA, Lock 12. If you look closely at the railing on the texas deck, immediately below the pilothouse door, you will see Doc with megaphone in hand, directing the locking. In those "early" days on the UMR, I think he made the locks from the texas deck, and not the wing bridge! The second picture was snapped in Sept. 1964 as the boat departed Lock 12 on a very cold, drizzly, gray afternoon. I remember this shot very well, because Doc was playing "Jingle Bells" when I snapped it! We followed the boat down to Sabula, IA and watched them go through the span of the railroad bridge near the Iowa shore in the dark before heading home and waiting for a another whole year to see the DQ again! 1964 was my first time riding the boat. I sold my Raleigh bicycle to get the fare to ride from Lock 12 to Lock 11 on her northbound leg of the St. Paul cruise. Ah, what good memories.

David,

Thanks for the pics of the DQ from back in the early days on the Upper! Here we are talking about a boat which 44 years ago at the age of 42 was running safely up there and today we are fighting to save her life when no where over the entire history has a passenger been lost to her perported dangers.

When I see these pictures with all her Main Deck windows in place and her original look only altered by the addition to the bow, the stage, and the shorter stack...she looks quite good....youthful compared to today.

However, the change in her look has only contributed to her compliment of safety features and durability.

The pic I am attaching was taken in May of 1979 from the stern of the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE (That is the BELLE's Green Doghouse in the bottom right hand side of the picture). The DQ was tied in below the BELLE because the MISSISSIPPI QUEEN was above at the original small explanade landing here at Louisville. They were upbound to Cincinnati in the first ever Great Steamboat Race cruise.

I had only been around the boat for about 4 years at this point and have always thought this is the best picture I ever took of her.

The previous summer, I believe it was in July, Bill and Mary Bill Bauer had introduced me to you as you painted a "Man In Wheel" sign on the bow of the boat.

~Travis~

Travis,

I notice in your photo that the workboat from the port fantail has been lowered into the river and is tied off there. The deck crew might have been doing some "touch-up" paint work on the hull prior to the Cinci arrival, or something similar. Judy or someone has posted a thread where they were discussing the old steel stage that preceded the present-day one. One summer in the early 70s when the boat was landed at Lambert Landing in St. Paul, Capt. Wagner had the mate and deck crew maneuver that thing so its entire length was positioned out over the concrete landing and parallel to the boat, and then lowered it all the way down onto the landing so the two metal stage support wires had slack in them. In doing that the deck crew could "greaze" the stage hoist cable, in Wagner's words. I vaguely remember a deckhand or maintenance man named Chuck who got the honor of doing the job that day (Bob Reynolds would probably remember). It's the only time I've seen the stage completely removed from the boat. I'll have to dig around and see if I can find a slide of that singular event. Unfortunately, I don't have a slide scanner to enable me to post it here, but maybe Jonathan can figure something out. Strange, how one memory leads to another and another . . . And I can't believe it was thirty years ago already when we first met.

I remember that day, Travis, C.W. Stoll did the roof work getting the BELLE landed and Wally Blice was in the pilot house. Gabe was over on the MQ, and Jim Blum on the DQ as roof captain. The two overnight boats were racing feverishly up to Rag Town from New Orleans for a June 1st arrival.

Frank,

I remember it well, too...you and your brother were there on the BELLE. We ended up following the boats up to Cincinnati wisiting with Ann Zeiger and Cori Reade at Madison the next day...then following the boats on the Kentucky side of the river the next morning.

Many many memories of that wonderful steamboat chasing day.

Remember this moment? Those shaggy heads of the 70's belong to you and your brother, Frank.

~Travis~

David,

I started a project of scanning alot of my old river pictures along with my family pictures recently. So I will have alot of the 70's memories to add to the fray soon!

Hope they all bring great memories for alot of us old timers!

~Travis~