I just enjoyed a ride on the Minne-Ha-Ha and both of her fleetmates this past September. Minne-Ha-Ha has a viewing platform in her engine room that is open to passengers, and the scenery around the lake is beautiful. Although the other boats in the Lake George Steamboat Company fleet aren't paddle steamers, they are interesting too.
One of Minne-Ha-Ha's fleetmates, the Mohican is an authentic relic of the lake's steamboat era, built in 1907 (by comparison, Minne-Ha-Ha is relatively modern, built in 1969). Originally a twin-screw steamer, the Mohican spent her early years running alongside the big side-wheelers Sagamore and Horicon, which were near-sisters of the Lake Champlain steamer Ticonderoga now preserved high and dry at the Shelburne museum in Vermont. The Lake George paddle steamers were laid up and scrapped in the 1930s amid the Great Depression and growing competition from automobile traffic, but the smaller Mohican continued on. She was repowered to diesel in the 1940s, and her wooden superstructure was replaced with steel in the 1960s, but she still has her classic lines and some cool original features like the old capstan on her foredeck with its brass cover engraved with her builder's name and construction date. While Minne-Ha-Ha just does one-hour trips around the southern end of the lake, the Mohican does the longer trip up through the scenic Narrows, and in the high season she runs the full 32-mile length of the lake.
The third vessel, the Lac Du Saint Sacrament went into service in 1989. Although she is modern construction, her classic lines were modeled after the old Hudson River Day Line propeller steamer Peter Stuyvesant.
Main Menu
UserBox
Search
