We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
This photo shows a front view of the Mandan keelboat with the mast and yardarm in place. The keelboat is 63 feet long, 12.5 feet wide and the mast stands at 43 feet. When there was no wind to move the boat by sail, crewmen, using long poles, walked along the deck and pushed off the bottom to propel the boat. Lewis and Clark left the keelboats at the Great Falls and switched to dugout canoes to explore the upper reaches of the Missouri River.
Alert Journal readers may recall a couple of stories that appeared over the last three years about the efforts to restore the Mandan keelboat sitting alongside the Missouri River in downtown Fort Benton. Finally, after four plus years of work and funding, the Mandan was officially declared restored at a recent celebration.
The Mandan keelboat in Fort Benton was one of three originally built in 1952 for the movie Big Sky. Only one of the three "props" survived and was on display behind the Montana Historical Society building in Helena for a few years.
In 1964 the remaining boat, still in Helena...
