When they retrieved the steamboat from the depths of Lake Minnetonka, Jerry Provost and Bill Niccum had planned to display her at Niccum’s boatyard for a short time and then return her to the lake in a place where she would be safe from further destruction. Jerry and Bill knew that they didn’t have the skills or resources to restore the steamboat. They hoped that by displaying her they would get the attention of an organization that could adopt and restore the boat.
Neither man knew that salvaging the boat, despite the danger and hard work, had been the easiest chapter of the story.
After all those years at the bottom of the lake, once the debris was removed from interior of the hull, the boat could float. Jerry and Bill towed the steamboat to Niccum’s boatyard where they pulled it from the water on what may have been the same dolly used to launch it and her sisters 74 years earlier.
They still didn’t know which boat they had retrieved: Como, Minnehaha, or White Bear.
Bringing the waterlogged hull of the steamboat to shore was a cause for celebration. The streetcar boat was immediately surrounded by the curious and nostalgic. As the hull dried out, the old paint began to show its colors. Slowly the name of the boat appeared: Minnehaha.
Growing Problems Behind the Scenes
The first was ownership. So long as the boat had rested on the bottom of Lake Minnetonka no one cared. However, when Jerry and Bill raised the boat, they removed it from public land. The State of Minnesota stepped in to claim temporary ownership. They determined that the rightful owner of the boat was the Metro Transit Company whose buses serve the Twin Cities. The MTC inherited the boat from its predecessor the Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company (TCRT). After some consideration, the MTC decided that they were not interested in owning the boat and Jerry and Bill were granted ownership.
Because the Minnehaha was considered a historically significant Jerry and Bill were responsible for its welfare.
They began looking at returning the boat to the lake where it would be safe from further deterioration. The Excelsior-Lake Minnetonka Historical Society (ELMHS) petitioned the Lake Minnetonka Conservation District for the right to place the boat in the lake near the Excelsior Commons. However, the Minnesota State Historical Society stepped in and stopped the plan.
The boat was now drying out and it was important to take action to preserve it. A grassroots effort to raise funds began. Coffee cans were set up by the boat to collect donations. The ELMHS sold Save the Minnehaha pamphlets, books, and postcards. Save the Minnehaha t-shirts appeared.
The money allowed Jerry and Bill to set up a system of sprinklers to keep the boat wet, preventing it from damage caused by its drying too rapidly, and build a platform to allow spectators to look down into boat’s hull.
The Minnehaha sat quietly in the boatyard while various attempts were made to start the restoration process but they never gained steam.
Over time the sprinklers were turned off and the Minnehaha began to decay. People would walk by the sagging, now rotting hull in the boatyard, and wonder what would become of her. A tree sprouted in the debris in the bottom of the hull and began to grow.
Even Bill Niccum lost hope. The Minnehaha occupied valuable space in his boatyard and after 10 years he was considering bulldozing and burning her.
Many thought that Minnehaha’s story had come to an end.
This post first appeared in the Lake Minnetonka Patch, o7/08/2011.