It’s exciting to see Peoria utilizing its riverfront by bringing in floating museums. First they brought in the LST 325 that has been here the past several days (today’s the last day to take a tour), and now we find out that a replica of The Niña is coming on September 21. It goes without saying, but you have to have a river to bring in these exhibits, so you won’t see them coming to, say, Bloomington or Galesburg. We’ve got quite an asset in that river.
The Niña is actually a nickname; the formal name of Columbus’s ship was the Santa Clara. The ship was a caravel and reportedly Columbus’s favorite ship. According to Wikipedia:
On Columbus’ first expedition, the Niña carried 24 men, captained by Vicente Yáñez Pinzón. They left Palos de la Frontera on August 3, 1492, stopping at the Canary Islands on August 12, 1492, and continued westward. Landfall was made in the Bahamas at dawn on October 12, 1492. After running the Santa Maria aground, Columbus returned on the Niña in early 1493, arriving in Palos de la Frontera on March 15.
The replica that’s coming to Peoria was built “in Valenca, Brazil, using only adzes, axes, hand saws, and chisels, in addition to naturally-shaped timbers from the local forest,” according to the exhibit’s website. “In December 1991, the Niña left Brazil and sailed to Costa Rica on a 4000 mile unescorted maiden voyage to take part in the filming of 1492. Since then, the ship has visited over 300 ports in the U.S.”
The Niña will be on display in Peoria from September 21 to October 2.
When I was just four years old (1978), I remember boarding a replica of the Santa Maria docked at the Peoria riverfront. Unfortunately, the ship burned shortly thereafter. Good to see these ships visiting Peoria.
I remember visiting this ship in Kiel Germany. Or maybe they have multiples of them… ** shrug **.. it was a ship billed as the the Nina. What was startling was how small it really was. Imagine hitting some mega big waves in the middle of the Atlantic… and you just have to shudder. Brave men were aboard that.
CJ:
Thanks for recognizing the Peoria “asset”: the river. I can remember Eckwood Park with brick pavers running along the water’s edge, the Red Arrow speed boat where you take rides, paddle wheelers coming often with their caliopys, and Dixon’s Fish Market. The waters edge was a destination back then.
I have this braincramp. We are in search of a quality downtown hotel, retail, shoppes, AND a museum. Why not tear down Joe’s Crabbyshack [it was a bad idea] and create a large riverfront “footprint” with the Sears lot that could be developed into a combined hotel/shoppes/museum AND with access to the river?
Does this make sense? It would definately be a destination.
The river sure looks a lot better from about, say, a few miles away. Up close, it’s pretty damned dirty and oft times smells. I’m amazed that people are willing to invest thousands into watercraft to boat on what is actually a giant mud puddle. Thanks in part to the barge traffic and the allowing of farmers to plant up to the edges of creeks, we have what we now have.
What was at one time a beautiful asset to the community is now a muddy basin filling up quickly with sediment, preparing to become a wetlands with a channel in about a generation or less.
I wish we could channel our energies into forcing our law makers to actually DO something about the river (Ray LaHood, in particular). LaHood has truly dropped the ball. With all of the influence he supposedly had through the years, and with Caterpillar’s World Headquarters here, you would have thought that the river could have been pretty much dredged over the past 10-20 years. But, nope… here we still are. That is why LaHood’s exit can not be greased quickly enough for me. I fear that Aaron will do more of the same for the river… in other words, nothing.
I don’t see how the river can EVER be the true destination that so many seem to think it is, without taking immediate steps to dredge it and try and make the water green again instead of sh*t brown. That means buying out the barge folks, and steering them towards rail car investments. That means tearing out the locks and dams, so that the sediment that does flow goes to New Orleans like it used to, not North Pekin.
It also means electing some folks who make this a priority.
Too bad the city dumps sewage into that asset.
While I would like to believe that bringing in floating museums means that Peoria really does value the river, that’s not really the case. The look and smell of the river indicate how little the city of Peoria cares about their largest natural resource.
This boat made a stop at the riverfront around 1993 or 1994 for two days. They were trying to recruit a few people to tour with them for a couple of years. It is an interesting boat.
Once upon a time the Ill. River was a big producer of fresh water fish and shellfish. It went by the carload to the east coast. Now, prego man is right. It looks nice from a distance, but up close it’s little more than an open sewer. Our so-called environmentalists need to get their you-know-whats off their @**@#@* bicycles and get to work restoring the river before it’s too late.
Too bad the city dumps sewage into their biggest natural asset. The smell of the river alone is enough to keep most people away. Peoria is never going to have a thriving destination riverfront if the river is also a dumping ground. I disagree that the responsibility for restoring the river belongs to the environmentalists. If the city wants to create a thriving destination, then Peoria needs to make the restoration a priority over commercial waterway businesses.