Boblo BoatS.S. Ste. Claire · Detroit
Detroit, Michigan · Launched 1910
Three generations of Detroiters fell in love, got sunburned, and grew up on these decks. After the fire, after the long years tied up at the dock, the Boblo Boat is open again. Come aboard.
Open now · Thu–Sun 10–5 · through Oct 31Every dollar from tickets, the store and the counter goes straight back into restoring the Ste. Claire.
Now boarding
No appointment needed. Walk down to Riverside Marina, buy a ticket at the gangway, and step onto the same main deck your grandparents danced across.
Thu – Sun
10 AM – 5 PM
Closed Monday through Wednesday. The season runs through October 31.
$10 adults
$5 kids 5–17
Under five sail free. Every dollar goes into the restoration.
150 St Jean St
Detroit, MI 48214
Free parking in the lot right beside the boat. It's small, so come early on sunny days.
Walk-ins are welcome, no reservation needed. Pay at the boat when you arrive; cards and cash are both fine. The main deck museum is open now; the upper decks open as the crew finishes them. She stays docked, so you won't get seasick.
A century on the river
Scroll, and the boat sails with you. Eighteen miles downriver, a hundred and sixteen years long.
The British purchase Bois Blanc Island from the local tribes. Three years later a blockhouse goes up to watch the river. In 1887 a group of Detroiters sails down to look the island over.
On June 18, 1898, the Detroit, Belle Isle & Windsor Ferry Company opens a picnic ground on Bois Blanc Island, eighteen miles downriver, and buys the island outright in 1900. Nobody in Detroit can pronounce it. "Boblo" sticks forever.
Naval architect Frank E. Kirby invents a new steel support system so a steamboat can carry a real ballroom. The Columbia launches as the first American steamboat built with one, something the rival White Star Line never had. Detroit wants more.
May 7, 1910. Toledo Shipbuilding Company slides Hull 116 into the Maumee. One hundred ninety-seven feet, four decks, a triple-expansion steam engine, and room for about 2,500 people. Kirby draws the lines; Louis O. Keil dresses the cabins in mahogany.
Boblo builds the second-largest dance hall in the world: five thousand dancers under one roof, with a sixteen-foot Welte orchestrion of 419 pipes paid for by Henry Ford. Long credited to Albert Kahn, it was designed by John Scott.
The name "Boblo" appears in the company minutes for the first time in 1927. In 1929 the Bug is installed on the island, a ride three generations would remember. On January 31, 1930, the island's lighthouse burns.
Ninety minutes downriver with a band on the second deck, the city lights sliding past, the river cooling off the day. First dates, proposals, and kids asleep on the benches by the time she turned for home. This is where the Boblo stories come from.
A young Black graduate of Commerce High School is ordered off the Columbia because of her race. She refuses the refund and takes the Bob-Lo Excursion Company to court. Read her story.
February 2, 1948. With Thurgood Marshall on her legal team, the United States Supreme Court rules that the Boblo boats must carry everyone. The case becomes a stepping stone toward Brown v. Board of Education.
On May 1, 1949, the Browning Steamship Lines announce they have bought Boblo for $549,000. Bill Browning takes charge of running the ships, and the summers that followed are the ones most Detroiters remember.
Joe Short, a former Ringling Brothers performer, becomes Captain Boblo. For twenty-two summers he works the decks in his captain's coat, making kids laugh on the way down and on the way back. He retires at ninety.
The park's owners go bankrupt and the boats are sold off. After eighty-one summers, the Ste. Claire ties up for what everyone assumes is the last time. The park itself closes on September 30, 1993.
On July 6, 1992, the Ste. Claire is named a National Historic Landmark, one of the last propeller-driven excursion steamers on the Great Lakes.
Two doctors buy the deteriorating ship to save her. What follows is a decade of hard luck: years stuck beside an industrial site, a move to River Rouge, an eviction when the land is sold, and a last-minute berth at Riverside Marina.
A welding accident. In one afternoon the upper decks and a century of mahogany are gone. What's left is a steel skeleton and a handful of pieces the crew had already carried off: parts of the grand staircase and the dance floor.
Restoration manager Stephen Faraj and a small crew bring her back deck by deck, in wood, the way Kirby built her. It is slow, careful work, and it is still going on.
September 3, 2026. The main deck opens as a floating museum, and for the first time in roughly twenty years the public can walk her decks. The last time was a haunted house a previous owner ran aboard, and before that, her final sailing in 1991. She's open again.
Come aboardThe vessel
Frank E. Kirby designed her to do one thing: carry as many happy people as possible, eighteen miles downriver and back, for as many summers as she could. She managed eighty-one.
Deck by deck
Eighteen miles downriver
Bois Blanc Island sits on the Canadian side of the river off Amherstburg: four kilometres long, 272 acres, and for ninety-five summers, the best day of the year. The boat ride was half the point. The other half is below.
The rides Boblo Island was famous for
The dance hall
Built in 1913, the pavilion was the second-largest dance hall on earth. At one end stood a Welte orchestrion sixteen feet tall and fourteen feet wide, 419 pipes playing itself, financed by Henry Ford. Generations learned to dance here, and plenty of them married the person they learned with.
A quiet crossing
During the Vietnam War the island became a crossing point. Young Americans took the boat down from Detroit, swapped their return tickets with people who had come over from Amherstburg, and walked into Canada without ever passing a customs post.
"The Islanders" is what Boblo called the singing and dancing group who performed in the Carousel Theatre, in the old carousel building that over the years also housed the fun house and the roller rink. I was a puppeteer in Fort Fun, but also worked in the main theatre, 1984 to 1987. Best summer job ever.
A Boblo Islander, from the memory board
The park closed on September 30, 1993. Amico Properties is turning the island into a residential and marina community; homes and condominiums stand there now, reached by private ferry, and the Sky Tower came down in 2021. But the boat is still here, and so are the stories.
Boblo home movies
Fifteen films from 1955 to the last summer in 1991, shot by families on the boat and on the island. Tap one to play it here. Turn the sound up for the whistle.
June 1945
Sarah Elizabeth Ray had just finished the secretarial program at Commerce High School and was on a class outing to Boblo with her classmates. She was the only Black member of the group. On the gangway of the Columbia she was told to get off. The Bob-Lo Excursion Company did not carry "colored people."
She refused the refund. With the NAACP, and with Thurgood Marshall on her legal team, she took the company through the Michigan courts and all the way to the United States Supreme Court. On February 2, 1948, in Bob-Lo Excursion Co. v. Michigan, the Court ruled that the Boblo boats, as public conveyances, must carry everyone. It was one of the cases that cleared the path for Brown v. Board of Education six years later.
After the 1967 uprising she co-founded Action House in Detroit, a place where Black kids could find a meal, a counselor, and something to do. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2021, fifteen years after her death.
When you stand on this deck, you're standing on the boat that made the whole river hers.
July 6, 2018
A welding spark, dry hundred-year-old wood, and a river breeze. By evening the top three decks were gone and the mahogany with them. Detroit mourned. Then a small crew went back to work.
Ship's log
What's next
Aboard today
The main deck is a timeline you can stand inside. Fourteen decade stations pair what was happening on Boblo with what was happening in Detroit and the world, from 1910 on.
Fourteen stations, one per era: the boat, the island, the city, the world.
Fully intact. It was one hundred percent steam-driven, on the same system that ran the engine. No backup, no motor, just steam.
A life-sized Joe Short, ready for the photo your kids will send their kids.
The ship's wheel photo stop. Everybody does it. You should too.
A display of the triple-expansion steam engine, set right over the original 116-year-old one. You can still smell the oiled machinery.
Have your picture taken aboard with a Polaroid camera. It stays on the boat forever.
Maps of Michigan, Metro Detroit and the United States. Put a pin where you're from.
At the counter
Popcorn, cotton candy, water and Faygo, plus wristbands, mugs, key chains, pennants, buttons, tote bags, sailor hats, shot glasses, pens, mouse pads, chip clips and t-shirts. Everything you buy goes back into her.
The Boblo Store
Shirts, caps, mugs and sailor hats, the same line we sell at the counter aboard. Pick what you like, pay securely online, and every dollar goes into the restoration.
Prefer to shop in person? The whole line is at the counter on the main deck, Thursday through Sunday.
Keep her moving
The museum is the plan. This season's tickets, popcorn and souvenirs go into railing and finishing the second deck, so next summer she can host events up there. Those events pay for the deck after that, and so on until she's whole. If you'd like to see her get there a little sooner, here's how.
The official restoration fund is on GoFundMe. Every gift goes straight into the ship, and a ticket's worth is plenty.
Give to the restorationWant to give something bigger, sponsor a deck, or volunteer a weekend? Email bobloboatdetroit@gmail.com.
The Ste. Claire is owned and restored by The Maximus Corporation, a Michigan corporation with one purpose: to bring the steamer back for operations on the Detroit River and preserve this vital piece of Michigan's history.
Say hello to the crew
Questions about a visit, a group, a school trip, or a story you want to share. Write to us.
Restoration manager Stephen Faraj leads the crew that brought her back. If you see him aboard, ask about the engine.