Les Phillips Blog

I’ve had the good fortune to have a neighbor, Pete Sieger, who is an architectural photographer. His photos are precise and clear. His vision is crystalline and thoughtful. Every time that I look at his work I experience a spark of insight.

It is through Pete that I’ve met Tom Dolan, an artist who works in a variety of media including photography. I have the same experience looking at Tom’s work as I do with Pete’s. In particular, I’ve learned how the medium does not shape the message but it does dictate the vocabulary.

Pete introduced me to a group of photographers. The older guys are accomplished: Christian Korab (photographer), Glenn Gordon (photographer and writer), and Michael Melman (photographer and painter). The younger photographers, who are just starting their journeys, contribute energy and youthful passion, as well as a modern perspective. The core of this group has formed a loose cooperative named IDE[A] which they use to pool resources and work projects.

We got together on a sunny Wednesday morning and, accompanied with coffee and cookies, had one of the most stimulating conversations that I’ve been involved in for years. We began by introducing ourselves and the projects that we are working on. Then, for three hours we discussed a variety of topics relating to our collective passion.

I think that a necessary ingredient for a healthy creative life is artistic cross pollination and that the successful artist, while often working alone, participates with other artists in an emotionally and intellectually rich environment. It is the sharing of new ideas, their adaptation, that generates the expansion of an artist’s creativity.

The photo, I-35W and 46^th Street Bus Station, is the result of that meeting. I left feeling energized and refreshed. I look forward to the next time that we gather.

Locating the streetcar boat in the ooze and dark waters of Lake Minnetonka was only the first step.

Jerry Provost’s five-year search for a streetcar boat had been a success but now the question was; what comes next? Was the boat salvageable? If so, was removing it from the bottom of the lake the best thing to do? And, most importantly, once the boat was brought to land, who would protect and restore it?

Jerry had approached the most likely sponsor, the Minnesota Transportation Museum, about the project. Unfortunately, the MTM had already scheduled its resources for the coming ten years. With no immediate options, Jerry put the project on hold and left the boat in the relative safety of the lake.

Situations Change

During 1980, Jerry continued to monitor the streetcar boat’s condition and observed that it was slowly being destroyed by the anchors dropped by fishing boats. In the immensity of Lake Minnetonka’s waters, the streetcar boat lay in a spot known for good fishing. Coincidentally, people interested in the boat began to network and connect Jerry with the resources he would need to raise the boat.

On such resource was Bill Niccum, the owner of Minnetonka Portable Dredging, located in Gideon Bay. Niccum had the barges and cranes necessary to assist in the salvage effort.

At the same time, Jerry’s company had several teams of experienced professional divers working around the U.S. There would be a lull in projects at the end of August, around Labor Day, and these drivers would be available for the effort.

After coordinating with Bill Niccum and others, Jerry decided to go ahead with raising the boat.

August 25th, a Monday, was set as the start date. Jerry assembled a crew of professional and volunteer divers to handle the variety of tasks that had to be done. Niccum offered his barges and personnel, even though this would be a busy period for him.

A Complex and Dangerous Operation

The boat was large: 70 feet long and 14 feet wide. It was heavy: being both water logged and filled with the debris that had been used to sink it.

Divers working at depth must be monitored, time spent at various depths and amount of exertion, followed by appropriate decompression stages as they return to the surface. All equipment would require monitoring during operation and frequent inspection and maintenance. Also, there would be the logistics of getting to and from the dive site and feeding the crews.

As the Dive Master, Jerry was responsible for all that and more.

August 25th was overcast and cold. A tug pulled a barge loaded with divers and their equipment to the wreck site. The morning was spent preparing for the following days of diving. Air compressors for the divers were set up and down lines attached from the barge and buoys to the streetcar boat. Divers use down lines to guide them directly to where they must work. This saves time and increases safety.

Many of the divers got their first look at the boat. She was sitting in about 55 feet of water, at an angle with her bow pointed upwards and her stern buried in the mud.

By the end of the first day the salvage effort was underway and progress had been made removing debris from the inside of the hull. Dredging had started along the keel.

August 26th dawned wet and windy with a slight chop on the lake. In his book, Salvaged Memories, Jerry observed, “Workers would get seasick today.” Despite the weather, the divers went below to remove debris from the hull and dredge more mud from the area of the bow: in preparation for the use of lift bags. These bags, with the ability to raise 2000 pounds each, would be attached to the hull and inflated with air. If a bag broke loose it would head for the surface, “… like a missile launched from a submarine” as Jerry wrote. A rogue lift bag could easily flip over any of the many boats gathered to watch the salvage effort.

August 27th started like the previous two: cool, wet and with a light wind. Divers removed the sticky mud from around the bow and attached lift-bags to the boat. With safety foremost in everyone’s minds, the bags were slowly inflated. The plan was that as the bags lifted the bow, the entire boat would be pried out of the muck and come free.

Instead, the suction of mud was greater than the lift of the bags and, rather than pull the boat free, its stern was sunk deeper into the gluey bottom of the lake.

Niccum sent out another barge, this one with a small crane, to add lifting power to the effort. Despite the added power, by the end of the day, the lake was still winning the tug-of-war over the boat.

The divers, support people, onlookers and press were disappointed. Jerry was asked if he was going to give up. He replied, “Heck no. We’ve come too far to let a little setback stop us now.”

Niccum agreed to send a second barge and crane the next day. That night, members of Jerry’s dive crew slept on the barge.

Jerry recognized that the delay in lifting the boat only added to the reward when they finally succeeded. As he wrote, “It’s been a perfect pre Labor Day activity for Lake Minnetonka. What could be better than this intense labor of love, to bring back one of the lake’s great excursion boats.”

August 28^th, cool with light wind. By now the prolonged diving in the cold dark water is starting to take a toll, ear infections and colds sidelined a number of volunteer SCUBA divers.

The divers worked at digging out the stern and slipping a lift strap under the boat. By mid day, with three barges, two cranes, and lift bags Jerry was ready to again try to raise the boat. Spectators, in an estimated 100 boats gathered to watch.

This time, the bow of the boat rose too quickly. The two lift bags attached to the boat’s bow bollard, a mooring post, tore free and rocketed to the surface.

Later in the evening, Jerry and his crew tried again but the ooze once more won and the boat remained on the bottom.

August 29^th, much warmer and more humid, a brisk wind with slight chop. An experienced commercial diver, Gene Denbeste, set about tunneling under the hull of the boat with a suction hose, clearing the way for a lift strap.

Dangerous Work

There was little space in the tunnel, the water was churned into a thick soup of mud and silt, visibility was almost zero, and the diver had to constantly clear his regulator to maintain proper air pressure. In this environment, DenBeste crawled under the hull.

Suddenly, the tunnel collapsed trapping Denbeste under the boat. His scream over the dive radio silenced everyone on the barge.

But this is what a skilled Dive Master plans for. Immediately a team of safety divers entered the water and went to DenBeste’s aide. They quickly dug him out and began the critical process of decompression: a multi-staged ascent that allowed him to naturally exhale the nitrogen dissolved in his blood. Coming to the surface too quickly would have been life threatening.

DenBeste’s close call did not stop the operation. While divers dug channels from both sides of the boat and slipped lift straps under it, Niccum delivered a third barge with a crane. The lake would not be allowed to hold the boat another night.

Late afternoon, the next attempt to raise the boat began. Slowly, the boat came free from the mud. For the first time in fifty-four years, the streetcar boat was off the bottom of Lake Minnetonka.

Cautiously, tugs pulled the barges with the streetcar boat in tow, towards shallow water where she would be more secure. As they moved along, the cranes gradually raised the boat until she surfaced.

Throughout the day, the fleet of onlookers had grown until several hundred boats were gathered waiting for their first glimpse of a streetcar boat. When she emerged the roar of sirens, horns, and cheering exploded across the lake.

Jerry wrote, “It was a moment I would not forget and I’m sure that everyone aboard the working barge that night felt the same. You could see on their faces the pride that everyone shared in that moment.”

Originally posted 06/06/2011, Lake Minnetonka Patch.

Memorial Day, 2011 — First cruise of the first day of the new season, the volunteer crew waits for passengers to board from the Excelsior Municipal Docks.

The crew is a continuing part of the latest chapter in Minnehaha’s tale.

A Little History

Since the 1870’s the lake had been a popular summer destination for Twin Citians. The wealthy built estates and called them their summer cottages. Hotels and resorts appeared and by 1881 a rail line connected the Twin Cities with Excelsior, where passengers could board steamboats, such as the City of St. Louis, that would take them to their lake destinations. And there were plenty, Lake Minnetonka’s shoreline is greater than California’s.

In 1905, the Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company (TCRT) began thinking of addressing the growing need for fast, dependable commuter and tourist service on the lake. The TCRT extended streetcar service to Excelsior and asked the Moore Boat Works in Wayzata to design an express boat that would expand service lake wide. The boat works delivered a distinctive and practical design. The hull had an unusual torpedo shape, with a tapering stern, and a cabin that was taken directly from the street cars then in use. Painted with the striking TCRT colors of yellow with iron oxide red trim, these express boats, also called streetcar boats, were a fixture on the lake from 1906, when six boats were launched, until 1929.

As the use of automobiles grew the need for the streetcar boats declined until, in 1926, TCRT began to retire the fleet. In that year, the Minnehaha and two of her sisters, the Como and White Bear, were towed to a point off of Big Island and sunk. In 1929 two more were sunk and 1949 the last.

There the Minnehaha lay in deep, dark water, covered in silt. Her story apparently over.

However, memories of the streetcar boats survived. Mementos taken from the boats before they were scuttled became cherished heirlooms.

This is where volunteers picked up the story.

The First Volunteers

In 1974, Jerry Provost and his wife Sharon learned about the streetcar boats of Lake Minnetonka. Jerry had grown up in N.E. Minneapolis and had ridden the yellow and red streetcars as a kid. He remembered the woven cane seats, the brass fittings, and the rows of windows.

Jerry was also a professional diver. The image of a sunken street car boat was more than a curiosity, Jerry needed to find one and explore it.

Jerry and Sharon began researching the streetcar boats. Word of their fascination with the boats and Jerry’s desire to find one spread.

It wouldn’t be easy. For the next 4 years, Jerry spent his free time diving various locations, unsuccesfully searching for a streetcar boat.

In 1978, a pilot flying a small plane over the lake, near Big Island, saw the faint outline of a large boat in the deep water. He called Jerry and told him of the sighting. Jerry flew his own plane along the reverse course of the pilot and saw the outline too. Now with coordinates he could return to the spot and attempt to find the wreck.

In 1979, Jerry and fellow divers, located the unknown wreck and identified it as one of the streetcar boats.

It had taken 5 years and uncounted hours since Jerry and Sharon had first heard of the streetcar boats until one was found nestled deep  in the silt of the lake.

Bringing it up would take much more effort and many more people. Luckily, others spurred on by Jerry and Sharon’s dedication would join them for the next chapter: resurrection.

These photos may be purchased as signed prints from the store, licensed as stock photos, or  downloaded from Flickr.*

* Images on Flickr are copyrighted by Les Phillips who retains all rights. Images downloaded from Flickr are for private display and may not be reproduced or distributed in any manner.