Lewiston man battles to save old steamboat

PORT OF WILMA – This is one crazy mixed-up love story.

The damsel in distress is a 66-year-old paddlewheel steamboat named Jean.

She has been stripped, docked, rejected, neglected, tugged, towed and deemed a national threat.

The guy who loves her is retired ironworker Vern Wilson, of Lewiston. He bought her over a year ago, hoping to save the old stern-wheeler many were talking about scrapping.

“Everybody thinks because it’s old, it’s got to go,” he said. “Everybody thinks I’m crazy. I just want to save it.”

The Jean was built in Portland in 1938 and served two decades carrying passengers and cargo along the Willamette and Columbia rivers.

In the 1970s, the company that owned the 170-foot boat gave it to the city of Lewiston as a historical resource. The Idaho Historical Society later took ownership of the boat, then sold it to Elmer Earl, a retired boat captain and rancher. He docked it in Asotin for nearly a decade with the hopes of making a historical monument. But because of his age, lack of support for his vision and because his docking rights had expired, Earl let the Jean go to Wilson last spring.

For the past year and a half, Wilson has been grappling with how to get the big boat downriver, either to Lewiston to a berth in Clarkston or to Oregon, where it can be restored. His various plans included keeping it in the Lewiston/Clarkston Valley, turning it into a visitor’s center and/or making it into a bed and breakfast. A burly guy with a shock of white hair and a thick white beard, Wilson is not one for papers and permits, and he hates red tape.

In the case of the Jean, there would be plenty of red tape required with all three cities, three counties, a number of ports, two states and several federal entities involved. But, in May of 2003, when it came time to move her from Asotin, Wilson simply invited volunteers with jet boats to pull her out during a spring high-water period.

They docked her at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers property on the Lewiston side of the Snake River. There she captured the attention and imagination of community members and tourists, many who liked the idea of keeping her there as a landmark.

“I’m a big fan of the Jean,” said Mel Taylor, who could see the boat from his home in Clarkston. “Steamboats like the Jean are such a big piece of the history of our area. We loved it there. It was a great view.”

But the Corps, citing liability concerns, hadn’t agreed to let the boat stay on federal property, and after a few weeks, it started pressuring Wilson to move her out. Finally, this spring, the Corps gave Wilson an ultimatum. Wilson asked the city of Lewiston and Nez Perce County for help, but neither entity wanted anything to do with the project because of costs, environmental hazards and liability. Wilson even stretched his deadline until June looking for options.

So far, Wilson estimates he’s spent about $50,000 trying to save the Jean. “It hasn’t cost anybody else anything.”

In the troubled history of the Jean, the past four weeks are perhaps the most exciting. First, on June 11, a group of jet boats pulled her away from the Lewiston levee as the Corps had demanded. But the Jean got stuck on sand, and her movers ended up tying her to a pier of the Red Wolf Crossing Bridge in Clarkston.

Her moorage there stirred reaction from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard. The local Coast Guard captain sent Wilson a letter stating that the Jean was a navigational hazard and a threat to the integrity of the bridge. The letter demanded he move the boat by June 21 or face penalties of up to $50,000 or five years in prison.

Sometime on the night of June 16, the Jean was mysteriously moved from the bridge a few minutes downriver to the Port of Wilma in Whitman County, where it remains tied up to a Ford cabover truck laden with concrete blocks.

The problem now is, even though the Jean isn’t blocking immediate port business, the Port of Wilma doesn’t want anything to do with her.

“We don’t know exactly how he got it there,” said Bruce Ensley, attorney for the port. The port has filed a complaint with the Superior Court in Whitman County asking the judge to issue an order for the removal of the boat.

According to the suit, the truck to which the boat is moored is in a fire lane, and both the truck and the boat are liabilities to the port. “And if you look at the history before it arrived at the Port of Wilma, that type of movement (with jet boats and sand bars) is somewhat precarious,” he said, adding that the port officials are concerned there may be hazards connected with keeping the boat at the port.

Wilson said he was planning to have a tugboat move the Jean by Tuesday. Those plans fell through, Wilson said Tuesday night as he and two friends scrambled to re-moor the steamboat they believe someone tried cutting loose earlier that evening.

“Why would people undermine what we’re doing? Why do they care that it’s here,” he said. “We’re just trying to save her.”

While the tug didn’t come through on Tuesday, Wilson is hopeful he can get the boat on its way to Portland soon. “I’ve got a tugboat coming,” he said, exasperated. “It will be out of here by Friday.”