Ticonderoga at Shelburne Museum, Vermont, 2011 | |
History | |
---|---|
United States | |
Name | Ticonderoga |
Owner | Champlain Transportation Company |
Builder | Shelburne Shipyard |
Launched | 1906 |
Out of service | 1950 |
Status | Museum ship |
General characteristics | |
Displacement | 892 tons |
Length | 220 ft (67 m) |
Beam | 59 ft (18 m) |
Installed power | 2 × coal-fired boilers |
Propulsion | Vertical beam steam engine, side-paddle-wheel |
Speed | 17 mph (27 km/h) (14.77 knots) |
Crew | 28 |
Ticonderoga (Side-paddle-wheel Lakeboat) | |
Location | Shelburne, Vermont |
Coordinates | 44°22′31.6″N73°13′56.4″W / 44.375444°N 73.232333°W |
Built | 1906 |
Architect | Champlain Transportation Company |
NRHP reference No. | 66000797 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | 15 October 1966 [1] |
Designated NHL | 28 January 1964 [2] |
The steamboat Ticonderoga is one of two remaining side-paddle-wheel passenger steamers with a vertical beam engine of the type that provided freight and passenger service on America's bays, lakes and rivers from the early 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Commissioned by the Champlain Transportation Company, Ticonderoga was built in 1906 at the Shelburne Shipyard in Shelburne, Vermont on Lake Champlain.
The other is the Eureka , built as the Ukiah for the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in California, renamed after a post-World War I reconstruction, and passed on to NWP owner Southern Pacific in 1942. The Eureka remained in service until SP's ferries were discontinued in 1958, and it was donated for museum display, where it remains to this day at Aquatic Park in San Francisco, California. Unlike the Ticonderoga however, the Eureka is still afloat.
Ticonderoga measures 220 feet in length and 59 feet in beam, with a displacement of 892 tons. Her steam engine, handmade by the Fletcher Engine Company of Hoboken, New Jersey, was powered by two coal-fired boilers and could achieve a maximum speed of 17 miles per hour (27 km/h) (14.77 knots).
The ship's crew numbered twenty-eight, including the captain, pilots, mate, deckhands, engineers, and firemen to operate the boat. The purser, stewardess, freight clerk, bartender, hall boys, cook, waiters, scullion, and mess boys attended to passengers and freight arrangements.
Initially, Ticonderoga served a north-south route on Lake Champlain. Daily, she docked at Westport, New York, where she met the New York City evening train. The next morning she carried travelers and freight northward to St. Albans, Vermont. In addition to passengers, Ticonderoga transported local farm produce, livestock, and dry goods on a regular basis, and during both world wars ferried U.S. troops between Plattsburgh, New York and Burlington, Vermont. Over the years she also operated on the east-west run from Burlington to Port Kent, New York and had a brief career as a floating casino.
When more modern ferries made her obsolete, Ticonderoga managed to persist in operation as an excursion boat for several years; however, by 1950 the steady decline in business threatened her future. Ralph Nading Hill saved Ticonderoga from the scrap heap when he persuaded Electra Havemeyer Webb to buy her for her growing museum. [3] While the Shelburne Museum attempted to keep her in operation, the steamboat era had passed making it difficult to find qualified personnel to operate and maintain the aging vessel.
In 1954 the Shelburne Museum decided to move Ticonderoga overland to the museum grounds. At the end of the summer season the boat paddled into a newly dug, water-filled basin off Shelburne Bay and floated over a railroad carriage resting on specially laid tracks. The water was then pumped out of the basin, and Ticonderoga settled onto the railroad carriage. During the winter of 1955 Ticonderoga was hauled across highways, over a swamp, through woods and fields, and across the tracks of the Rutland Railway to reach her permanent mooring on the Shelburne Museum grounds.
Much of her interior was restored to its original grandeur. The dining room and stateroom halls retain their butternut and cherry paneling and ceilings their gold stenciling. The barbershop, captain's quarters, dining room, and promenade deck contain furniture and accessories used in the Ticonderoga and other Lake Champlain steamboats. [4]
Ticonderoga was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964 under the name Ticonderoga (Side-paddle-wheel Lakeboat). [2] [5]
Lake Champlain is a natural freshwater lake in North America. It mostly lies between the US states of New York and Vermont, but also extends north into the Canadian province of Quebec.
Burlington is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Vermont and the seat of Chittenden County. It is located 45 miles (72 km) south of the Canada–United States border and 95 miles (153 km) south of Montreal. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the population was 44,743. It is the least populous city in the 50 U.S. states to be the most populous city in its state.
Shelburne is a town in Chittenden County, Vermont, United States. Located along the shores of Lake Champlain, Shelburne's town center lies approximately 7 miles (11 km) south of the city center of Burlington, the largest city in the state of Vermont. As of the 2020 census, the population of Shelburne was 7,717.
A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. Steamboats sometimes use the prefix designation SS, S.S. or S/S or PS ; however, these designations are most often used for steamships.
A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine that drives paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, where the first uses were wheelers driven by animals or humans.
Ticonderoga is a hamlet in the southeast part of the town of Ticonderoga, in Essex County, New York, United States. The name is derived from the Haudenosaunee term for "between the two waters", the two waters being Lake George and Lake Champlain. The hamlet became a census-designated place (CDP) in 2008. As of the 2010 census, the population was 3,382, out of a total 5,042 residents in the town of Ticonderoga.
Eureka is a side-wheel paddle steamboat, built in 1890, which is now preserved at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California. Originally named Ukiah to commemorate the railway's recent extension into the City of Ukiah, the boat was built by the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad Company at their Tiburon yard. Eureka has been designated a National Historic Landmark and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 24, 1973.
The Lake Champlain Transportation Company is a vehicle ferry operator that runs three routes across Lake Champlain between the US states of New York and Vermont. From 1976 to 2003, the company was owned by Burlington, Vermont, businessman Raymond C. Pecor Jr., who is Chairman of its board. In 2003, he sold the company to his son, Raymond Pecor III.
Chimney Point is a peninsula in the town of Addison, Vermont, which juts into Lake Champlain forming a narrows. It is one of the earliest settled and most strategic sites in the Champlain Valley.
Shelburne Museum is a museum of art, design, and Americana located in Shelburne, Vermont, United States. Over 150,000 works are exhibited in 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of which are historic and were relocated to the museum grounds. It is located on 45 acres (18 ha) near Lake Champlain.
Shelburne Farms is a nonprofit education center for sustainability, 1,400 acres (570 ha) working farm, and National Historic Landmark on the shores of Lake Champlain in Shelburne, Vermont. The property is nationally significant as a well-preserved example of a Gilded Age "ornamental farm", developed in the late 19th century with architecture by Robert Henderson Robertson and landscaping by Frederick Law Olmsted.
Many steamboats operated on the Columbia River and its tributaries, in the Pacific Northwest region of North America, from about 1850 to 1981. Major tributaries of the Columbia that formed steamboat routes included the Willamette and Snake rivers. Navigation was impractical between the Snake River and the Canada–US border, due to several rapids, but steamboats also operated along the Wenatchee Reach of the Columbia, in northern Washington, and on the Arrow Lakes of southern British Columbia.
Ralph Nading Hill was a Vermont writer and preservationist.
The steamboat Oakes Ames was built in 1868 by the Napoleon B Proctor Shipyard in Burlington, Vermont for the Rutland Railroad. The 244-foot paddle wheeler was designed to ferry railroad cars from Burlington across Lake Champlain to Plattsburgh, New York. She was named after one of the railroad's directors' Oakes Ames.
Lake steamers of North America include large, steam-powered non-government vessels with displacement hulls on American freshwater lakes excluding the Great Lakes. They may have served as passenger boats, freighters, mail-boats, log-boom vessels or a combination thereof. The construction of such vessels posed unique problems on water bodies located away from established dry-docks and marine railways, or connecting canals to such facilities.
The Champlain Valley National Heritage Area is a federally designated National Heritage Area encompassing eleven counties in New York and Vermont surrounding Lake Champlain. The heritage area designation recognizes the area's historical and scenic significance. The region was a strategic corridor between the Hudson Valley of the United States and the Richelieu Valley of Quebec during the American Revolution in the late 18th century, and saw considerable military action during the War of 1812. During the American Civil War the valley was a part of the Underground Railroad network.
The Larrabee's Point Complex consists of a collection of ferry-related buildings and structures at the western end of Vermont Route 74 in Shoreham, Vermont. Included are facilities currently used by the oldest operating ferry on Lake Champlain, the Ticonderoga-Larrabees Point Ferry, and two buildings historically associated with the ferry operation. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
The McNeil Homestead is a historic ferry-related property off Wings Point Road in Charlotte, Vermont, USA. The complex includes a 19th-century house, former tavern, and barn, all built by members of the McNeil family, the first operators of the Charlotte-Essex Ferry, whose eastern terminus is just south of the property. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
The O.J. Walker was a cargo schooner that plied the waters of Lake Champlain between New York and Vermont. Built in 1862 in Burlington, Vermont, she hauled freight until sinking off the Burlington coast in a storm in 1895, while carrying a load of brick and tile. The shipwreck, located west of the Burlington Breakwater, is a Vermont State Historic Site, and is accessible to registered divers. It is one of the best-preserved examples of the 1862 class of sailing canal schooners, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
The Phoenix was a sidewheel paddle steamer operating on Lake Champlain between the United States states of New York and Vermont and the British province of Lower Canada. Built in 1815, she grounded, burned and sank in 1819 off the shore of Colchester, Vermont. Her surviving wreckage is the oldest known example of a sidewheel steamer anywhere in the world. The wreck site is a Vermont State Historic Site, which may be visited by registered and qualified divers. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
Media related to Ticonderoga (ship, 1906) at Wikimedia Commons