by Carla Knapp
DELPHI — With all the restoration work done on the canals and bridges in Delphi and Carroll County, members of the Carroll County Wabash and Erie Canal Association have dreamt of building a replica canal boat to float along the historic waterways they’ve worked to preserve.
Now, with the help of a grant from the Indiana Department of Transportation, that dream will soon become a reality.
Delphi recently received one of 26 grants awarded statewide through Indiana’s Transportation Enhancement Program. The city will receive $550,392 to construct the boat as well as a dock and warehouse to be located at the Canal Interpretive Center in Canal Park.
“We’re very excited about this,” Canal Association President Dan McCain said of the project. “It’s a living dream that we’ve had and it’s something we’ve been looking forward to for many years. We feel it will make Delphi quite an important historic venture for families and people interested in coming to see the boat.”
This is the second grant INDOT has awarded for the project. McCain said the project had been in the works for several years and had reached the engineering stage. However, soil studies at the site along the Wabash and Erie Canal showed the land could not support the proposed structures.
McCain said the unforeseen problems have greatly increased the engineering costs, and in all, the project will likely cost more than $1.1 million, which will be paid for with private funding in addition to the grants.
McCain said he was hoping the warehouse, dock and boat would be operational by June 2009.
The boat will hold about 38 passengers and will be equipped with a small electric motor. It will also have rigs to hitch it to animals that can pull it, a common practice in the 1850s when canal boats were popular.
At the height of their use, McCain said 20 to 30 boats would pass through the area each day back and forth from Evansville and Lafayette up to Logansport, Fort Wayne and even into Ohio. Once the replica boat is commissioned, it will operate in a 1-mile section around the Interpretive Center.
The boat will be used during the warmer months and will be housed through the winter months in the warehouse. Like the adjacent Interpretive Center, the warehouse will be designed to reflect 1850s architecture and will closely resemble a historic street scene from downtown Delphi.
There are only about 18 commercially run replica canal boats in the United States, most of which are in the Northeast, so McCain expects the boat to attract more tourism to the area.
“I’ve been told by other sites that have canal boats to expect it to at least double if not triple our attendance just because of people’s curiosity in riding a canal boat,” he said.
Carla Knapp can be contacted at (574) 732-5150 or via e-mail at carla.knapp@pharostribune.com
