Models of steamboats abound at the River Discovery Center of Paducah, Kentucky, located across the street from the faamous riverfront procession of colorful murals. Steamboats and the river industry is important to the small city, located on the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers.
Pilothouse Simulator
The museum has more than just steamboat models. The centerpiece is a pilothouse simulator which allows you to guide your boat and adjust its speed as you guiide it along the channel and evade river traffic through a variety of scenarios displayed on wraparound video monitors. Your piloting options include guiding a towboat, Coast Guard vessel, or speed boat safely along the channel.
Other displays include a tilted rain table that demonstrates the regional drainage pattern with an overhead video providing information, a cutaway of a hydroelectric dam where you control the flow of water past the turbine in the drainage pipe, and various models demonstrating lock and dam systems and river bottoms environments.
Wildlife are a key element of the river industry and a mounted display of are fish surrounds some tanks including one with live turtles. Mussels have their own display; not only an important indicator species that reflect environmental trends but the source of freshwater pearls for a large button-making factory in Paducah that was important until plastic took over in the 1940s.
Other displays include a Mark V Diving Suit used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a rrestored calliope, and a couple locatiosn where you can play samples of period music at the push of a button like Waitin’ For the Robert E. Lee.
Riverboats and Steamboats
Riverboats have had an important role in Paducah’s past and that has not changed. Today the 4,000 hp diesel towboat pushing 15 barges that each carry as much as 24 freight cars has replaced the steamboat of old. The numerous boat models include a mannequin clothed in the uniform of an old-style boat captain who may or may not have been the Master, or owner. The captain might just as easily be the navigator or fill some other role on the vessel, subordinate to the boat’s master.
A subset of models and images of the many vessels that used the river system during the Civil War are also displayed, from steamboat to ironclad, accompanied, naturally, by a Civil War timeline. Paducah saw a small conflict during the war when General Nathan Bedford Forest attacked the occupying Union forces, but is best-recalled as the staging point for General Ulysses Grant’s initial victories below Paducah over Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson, 12 miles away on the Cumberland providing important early Union victories at a time when the Union was enjoying few victories.
The largest steamboat model on hand is of the 200-bed excursion boat Delta Queen, a sternwheeler until recently cruising the Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers. Because the vessel does not meet Coast Guard mandates for overnight lodging, the boat is now permanently docked in Chattanooga for use as a hotel. Created by Guy Williams, the glass-enclosed model is imposing.
The museum is located in Paducah’s oldest building restored to its antebellum state with period furnishings. Naturally, there is a well-stocked gift shop.
Hours, Admission, Website
Hours are 9:30am to 5pm, Monday through Saturday, 1-5pm Sundays between Apil and November.
Admission is $7 for adults, $5 for children under 12, with senior and group discounts available. The address is 117 South Water Street, the phone 270-575-9958. There is a websiter at www.discoverycenter.org. The museum is located in a 20-block area that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Other Attractions
As mentioned, across the street is a procession of murals facing the downtown district that line the waterfront, painted on the floodwall that protects the city. Beyond the last of the murals is a 2-8-2 locomotive, car, and caboose on static display, donated by the Illinois Central Railroad.
On the other side of the floodwall facing is Waterfront Park with benches, historical markers, and a wonderful view.
Paducah is also noted for its National Quilt Museum of the United States and across the Ohio River bridge in Metropolis, Illinois, is the Superman statue in front of the Massac County Courthouse, the Super Museum, Harrah’s Casino, and Fort Massac State Historical Site with its restored French fort.