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Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a column on Belle of Austin

By Tim Ruzek

In its second year on the Cedar River’s backwaters, the Belle of Austin offered evening steamboat trips on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Josiah Furtney, the Belle’s main owner and operator, would depart at 7:15 p.m. those days from his home on the Cedar about where Austin’s YMCA is today. Fifteen minutes later, he arrived at the boat landing below the end of North Main Street.

Extra trips were offered at 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

During the 1894 season, the Furtney & Anderson partnership ran newspaper ads frequently to promote their six-mile roundtrips to Columbia Park, a peninsula north of Austin and across the river from Oakwood Cemetery.

“Arrangements made for picnics and excursions on 3 or 4 hours notice,” the ad stated.

Early in the season, the Mower County Transcript noted how the U.S. government estimated about $2.2 million in improvements would be needed, mostly for constructing four locks and dams, to extend boat navigation on the Mississippi River from St. Paul to Minneapolis’ flour mills.

“Why don’t the Austin boys apply for an appropriation to extend navigation for the Belle of Austin from Litchfield’s landing to the Ramsey mills (Ramsey Dam)? It would be just as sensible and proper,” the Transcript wrote, referencing a one-mile stretch of the Cedar upstream from Columbia Park, the limits of the Belle’s navigable waters.

Columbia Park being downstream from Ramsey Dam provided an unexpected danger at least once.

According to a 1950 “Old Timer” column in the Austin Daily Herald, Ramsey Dam blew out “many years ago” in a spring flood, causing an “adventuresome trio” of boys playing on an island east of Oakwood Cemetery (likely Columbia Park) to climb into trees when a “great wall of water came surging down the swollen river.”

The boys were trapped for hours until a man heard their cries and swam over to help them.

In calmer times, groups of people enjoyed using the Belle to get to and from Columbia Park. On one day in 1894, about 300 people made trips on the Belle for the Congregational church’s Sunday School picnic.

“The Belle of Austin is just the way to go up the river and get all the enjoyment there is in the trip,” the Transcript wrote July 11, 1894. “Viands” (items of food) were “varied and abundant” and with the “amusements the park offered, the day was complete.”

As people became familiar with the Belle, residents also could hear when the boat was making a river trip.

For numerous trips, the Belle’s passengers included local musicians — typically Tischy’s band — who performed at Columbia Park events but also played popular songs on the cruise.

The Belle also featured a whistle.

“The whistle of the Belle of Austin is once more heard on the Cedar, and its facilities for accommodating excursion parties will be hailed with delight by many,” the Transcript wrote May 30, 1894.

By fall 1894, the community was well acquainted with that sound.

“The familiar whistle of the steamer Belle of Austin was heard Saturday on its excursion trips to the park grounds,” the Transcript wrote Oct. 24, 1894.

Three years later, though, the Transcript was tired of it.

“The whistle of the little steamer Belle of Austin on Sundays is a public nuisance and should be summarily suppressed,” the newspaper wrote June 30, 1897.

If this was a problem, it likely stemmed from the Belle staying busy on the river.

The 1896 season seemed to be a particularly busy one.

In June 1896, German residents in Austin hosted a gathering at Columbia Park that used the Belle. Early on a Sunday morning, “people from far and near began to flock into the city to attend the Saengerbund picnic,” the Herald wrote.

“The day was a perfect one, and the steamer, Belle of Austin, was kept ever ploughing the waters of the Cedar in carrying the large crowd to and from Columbia Park,” the article stated.

The Herald reported “hundreds” of visitors came to Austin, and Columbia Park became a “scene of much enjoyment from the early dawn to late at night, and all went home voting it the grandest occasion ever held in Austin.”

In August 1896, Austin’s Arlington Hotel organized a party for its employees and families at Columbia Park, where they “feasted on roast pig,” the Herald wrote Aug. 15, 1896.

The Belle was seen leaving its Main Street landing “heavily laden with a merry crowd” of Arlington employees, guests and Tischy’s band. The Belle “ploughed her way through the placid waters of the Cedar to Columbia Park, where Landlord Grant had prepared a grand barbecue,” which was a “feast fit for a king.”

In September 1896, a joint picnic at Columbia Park happened with the Modern Woodmen of America and the Ancient Order of United Workmen groups. The groups competed in a ball game, women had a “nail-driving contest” and there were boat races, wood-sawing contests and foot races.

With coffee provided at the park, attendees were told to bring “well-filled lunch baskets with cups and saucers.”

In 1896, the Belle operated into November, with its Nov. 4 trip to Columbia Park being its last of the season and a chance to try a “speeded wheel.”

“It will be the fastest trip of the season,” the Herald wrote.

If you have an idea for Tim Ruzek, you can reach him at tim@mowerdistrict.org