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Tourists and lakeside dwellers of Indiana’s larger lakes have often enjoyed sightseeing and history teaching excursions on large watercraft. On Wawasee, it is the S.S. Lilypad. On Webster, it is the venerable Dixie Sternwheeler.
For many years Winona Lake’s excursion boat was named The Winona Queen, and a series of watercraft have carried that name as they cruised around the 571-acre Winona Lake.
There seem to be very few historical records of the boats, but early photographs show a sternwheeler named “Winona Queen” docking in front of the Winona Hotel and offering rides for 25 cents each.
There are many folk legends about the boat’s demise, including one tale that it was intentionally sunk and resides today in the muck at the bottom of the lake. What is known, however, is that it was replaced by a houseboat, obtained from the Endicott family, sometime in the 1950s.
When its run ended, it was replaced by a 34-passenger pontoon boat, also named The Winona Queen. Excursions ended sometime in the latter half of the 20th century and the latest Queen was retired to a swamp off Wooster Road in Winona Lake.
Recently, a simulated Queen wheelhouse and captain’s wheel was installed as a piece of trailside art along the Heritage Greenway. An accompanying plaque honors the memory of the string of Winona Queens and offers children the opportunity to enter the wheelhouse and pretend to captain the ship.
A 2006 article in the Grace Brethren denominational magazine portrays participants in the August 1958 national conference of Brethren churches discharging passengers from the “Winona Queen” sightseeing boat which, the caption indicates, “no longer exists.”
Discovering
the Lost Queen
A few years ago this columnist was in western Pennsylvania for a conference. Arriving on Saturday, we were invited to a function at a campgrounds along the upper Allegheny River, which was owned by 83-year-old Chuck Rupp, the father of Winona Lake resident Gladine Rupp McCall.
Somehow we got talking about “The Winona Queen” and Chuck asked, “Would you like to see it?”
“WHAT??” I said. “Get on the golf cart,” said he.
So we meandered the golf cart up the river about a quarter-mile, through wooded paths and gravel roads, past a number of campers and tenters, until we arrived at an old abandoned brickyard surrounded by a locked chain-link fence.
Rupp unlocked the gate and we continued, driving through massive old open-air buildings, past boats on trailers, parked recreational vehicles, and machinery and kilns dating back to the days of brickmaking at the factory.
Eventually, in a corner of one of the sheds, we came to the “Winona Queen.” Not the boat which had a sternwheel and a large captain’s house. This was the “successor” Queen, a 34-passenger pontoon boat which apparently had been retired sometime in the 1960s or 1970s.
A decade or more earlier, Rupp had purchased the boat from its storage place in Winona Lake, hauled it to Templeton, Pa., rebuilt/reconditioned the entire craft and used it for several seasons on the Allegheny, even pulling some waterskiers at times.
Because of its size and lack of maneuverability, however, it was now once again “retired” and sat on its trailer in the abandoned brickyard.
The “lost Queen” had been found, and it sits safely in the brick warehouse, still carrying the “Winona Queen” sign, awaiting its next assignment.
Too Much Pizza
A story about a different boat on Winona Lake involves the late Dr. Larry Poland, who grew up in Winona Lake and graduated from Warsaw High School.
Shortly after his marriage in 1962, Poland and his bride moved into a basement apartment on Chestnut Street in Winona Lake to begin studies at Grace Seminary. He took a summer job as captain of “The Virginia,” a long, slender, pencil-like tour boat that had survived a previous life at the Wisconsin Dells.
In addition to daytime cruises, Poland also took conference attendees on “Moonlight Cruises,” which commenced from the entrance of the canal at about 10 p.m., when evening conference sessions were ended. Poland would narrate over the loudspeaker as the boat circled Winona Lake, spinning off stories about the history of the area. His spiels were, he admits, “mostly true,” with “only minor embellishments.”
One of his more memorable cruises ended abruptly when he ran the boat aground on a sandbar. His passengers alternately rushed from stern to bow as Poland rocked the boat vigorously and gunned the engine to free it from the sandbar.
Poland teamed up with Jerry Lelle, who ran the “Lelle Pad” restaurant in the Eagle Arcade building, to sponsor all-the-pizza-you-can-eat cruises. However, the hungry young Assembly staff members discovered the pizza bonanzas and ate so much the partners were soon forced to discontinue the pizza-buffet cruises.
Perhaps some day an entrepreneur will re-commission a watercraft as the new Winona Queen, and sightseeing tours will resume. In the meantime, photos and anecdotes will memorialize the colorful lives of boats named “The Winona Queen.”
