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| Excursion steamboats enjoyed
a golden era
From the time that Duluth was first settled, in the mid- 1850s, there was regular steamboat service on the St.  Louis
River all the way to Fond du Lac. The first steamers brought down rafts
of logs to Duluth's early sawmills. But then, after about 1885, they began
offering excursions or "pic-nic" trips, too. Many of the excursions were
made for the benefit of local civic or church groups.
The Fond du Lac excursion trade flourished after the turn of the century with the addition to the route of large steamers like the 80-foot Plow  Boy,
the 120-foot Chicora and the still-larger Columbia. The steamers' golden
era on the St. Louis River, however, was yet to come.
Early in 1919, Duluth's Clow & Nicholson Transportation Co. purchased the 150-foot sidewheeler A. Wehle Jr. from parties in Houghton, Michigan, and, following some minor changes to her accommodations, put her on the popular river route. In the summer of 1920 she was renamed Rotarian by co-owner David D. Clow of Marinette, Wisconsin, then president of his local Rotary club.She bore that proud name for the remainder of her career, although her stay in the Twin Ports was not a particularly long one. She left Lake Superior in 1927.. |
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The Rotarian berthed  at
Fifth Avenue West on the Duluth waterfront and offered trips twice daily
to Fond du Lac at 60 cents for the round trip, or out on the lake and around
Minnesota Point ("Around the Horn") by moonlight at 35 cents. She boasted
a capacity of 600 passengers.
The Rotarian brought such popularity to the trip that after two or three years she could no longer handle the traffic. Long lines formed at her ticket office and she was frequently filled to capacity. On balmy August weekends she could not always accommodate all who waited in line, and so in 1924 Clow & Nicholson purchased the 180-foot iron paddlewheeler Montauk. Three years later the company offered the Rotarian for sale. The stately Montauk became the last of the Fond du Lac steamers and by all odds she was the best known, but her story is the subject of a later article. The old Rotarian left Duluth in the summer of 1927 for a new home at Chicago. On the way down Lake Michigan she was taken into Sturgeon Bay and stripped of her machinery and made into a floating restaurant. Before the summer was out, she was berthed at Clark Street in Chicago and serving a dine-and-dance clientele. Two years later, at the height of the Depression, she was closed and soon afterward blown up and scuttled in Lake Michigan. While she was later eclipsed by the grand Montauk, the old Rotarian carved a niche for herself in the memories of Duluthians for the service she rendered and the name she bore some 70 years ago. C.P. Labadie is Director of the Corps of Engineers Canal Park Museum in Duluth. |
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