{"id":96213,"date":"2019-01-15T19:51:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T02:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mary-jane-boat-with-a-story-to-dock-at-durango-train-museum\/"},"modified":"2019-01-15T19:51:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T02:51:29","slug":"mary-jane-boat-with-a-story-to-dock-at-durango-train-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mary-jane-boat-with-a-story-to-dock-at-durango-train-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Jane, boat with a story, to dock at Durango train museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Rod
Rod and Robin Turner stand next to their boat, named Mary Jane, a 1939 Century Sea Maid 54 runabout that the Turner family purchased brand new and kept at Electra Lake. The boat will be on display beginning Thursday at the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad & Museum.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad will soon get a new exhibit in its museum: a 17-foot boat brought to Durango by rail in 1939.<\/p>\n

The Mary Jane, named after a person, not a plant, will be on display at the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad & Museum beginning Thursday and will stay there until some time this summer, when its owners, the Turner family, plan to take it for one last voyage, said Jack Turner, the great, great grandson of John Charles Turner, who was a member of an exploration party in search of gold and silver in 1861 when they came upon the Animas Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a hell of a story, and it\u2019s about locals in Durango,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n

The story begins with Richard W. Turner, Jack\u2019s grandfather, who married the daughter of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Superintendent L.W. Bowen. The Turners had been members of the Electra Lake Club since 1920, and the family wanted some way to get out on the water.<\/p>\n

The 17-foot long Century Sea Maid 54 runabout, constructed of Philippine mahogany and outfitted with a four-cylinder, 75-horsepower Gray Phantom engine that pushes its top speed to 33 mph, was built in Manistee, Michigan, and sent by railroad to Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey brought it in on this railroad car and lifted this boat onto a flatbed truck, and I don\u2019t know how they got it into the lake,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n

\"Rod
Rod and Robin Turner are pulled down Main Avenue in their 1939 wooden boat, named the Mary Jane, during Durango\u2019s Fourth of July Parade in 2017. The boat will be on display beginning Thursday at the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad & Museum as part of an exhibit called \u201cThe Landing of the Mary Jane.\u201d<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

But there was just one problem: The boat didn\u2019t come with instructions, Turner said. The boats were top-of-the-line at the time \u2013 the company that made them was known as \u201cthe thoroughbred of boats,\u201d said Christian Robins, marketing director with the D&SNG museum.<\/p>\n

When the family started the boat for the first time, they didn\u2019t realize the engine was in gear. So when the engine roared to life, it launched the boat forward and hit a dam, Turner said.<\/p>\n

Since the boat was brought to Electra Lake, it has never left. It has been used as a fishing boat and recreation vessel. The Turner family used to pull kids behind the boat on a piece of plywood \u2013 an early version of wakeboarding. The Turner kids once built a water ski out of a piece of wood and screwed sneakers into the plank \u2013 an early version of a water ski that remains at the family\u2019s cabin north of town.<\/p>\n

Dean Brown, whose family had a 1953 Century boat, can attest to the work it took to keep the wooden boats shipshape.<\/p>\n

The boats would dry and shrink in the dry Southwest. Before using it for the season, it was necessary to wet the boat with a hose over a period of weeks to make the wood swell to its normal size so the boat wouldn\u2019t leak, Brown said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a gorgeous boat, a class act,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Turner family enjoying the Mary Jane. The Mary Jane, a Century Sea Maid 54 runabout that has been a fixture at Electra Lake since 1939, will be on display beginning Thursday at the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad & Museum.<\/span>Courtesy of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

It has taken quite a bit of care to keep the Mary Jane from falling into disrepair over the years. Mahogany doesn\u2019t do so well in dry Southwest Colorado, Turner said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a monumental labor of love to take care of that boat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And although the boat will be stored in the museum, it will be maintained to operational standards, Turner said. He hopes the relic of history will bring joy to residents of Durango in seeing a small piece of the town\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor all the ways Durango has changed over the decades, I would say you\u2019re right, but what\u2019s amazing is how much has stayed the same,\u201d Turner said. \u201cIt\u2019s truly a local event for Durango and a piece of local history, and we\u2019re proud to be one tiny part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

bhauff@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

An earlier version of this story misspelled Robin Turner\u2019s first name in photo captions.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

If you go<\/h4>\n

\u201cThe Landing of the Mary Jane\u201d will open Thursday at the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad & Museum, 479 Main Ave. The exhibit documents the history of the Century Boat Co.-manufactured vessel owned by the Turner family. Admission is free.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

80-year-old vessel arrived via railroad, puttered around Electra Lake<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[170,13,2217],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-96213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-durango-and-silverton-narrow-gauge-railroad-co","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-power-boating"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96213"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=96213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}