Wilbraham’s Forgotten Steamboats

The Connecticut River once bustled with steamboat travel, and one early example was the Agawam, launched in 1837 by Frink, Chapin & Co. of Springfield to ferry passengers over the Enfield Falls. Its hull, built by Longmeadow mechanic Erastus Reed, was unusually shallow, drawing only 13 inches of water, with a full-length promenade and a center-fired locomotive-style boiler flanked by separate ladies’ and gentlemen’s cabins. Although no image of the Agawam survives (the familiar photograph shows the Dexter), boats like it were a common sight on the river.

The "Dexter", Connecticut River steamboat. Longmeadow Historical Society

What is most surprising, however, is that the steamboat era was not limited to the Connecticut River. Wilbraham itself briefly joined this chapter of transportation history, despite being far from any major waterway. In the 1890s, the town saw not one but two steamboats in operation: Peter Flibotte’s short-lived Chicopee River, which ran between Jenksville and Collins Depot in 1891, and Marshall Lane’s Lakeview, which carried passengers across Nine Mile Pond beginning in 1894. Though both ventures were brief, they remain among Wilbraham’s most unexpected and fascinating experiments.

The first effort came in July of 1891, when Peter Flibotte received a license to operate a small steamboat on the Chicopee River. His vessel, appropriately named the Chicopee River, was to run between Jenksville in Ludlow, near the Ludlow Bridge, and Collins Depot in Wilbraham, by the Collins Bridge. The idea was simple enough: carry passengers along a quiet stretch of the river and offer a new kind of local transportation and recreation.

Chicopee River. Digital Commonwealth

But the Chicopee River had other plans. Despite a promising start, the steamboat made only a handful of trips before the venture was abandoned. The river’s shallows, sandbars, and hidden rocks made navigation nearly impossible. Even with a small vessel, the obstacles proved too dangerous and too unpredictable to overcome. The dream of regular steamboat service between Ludlow and Wilbraham quietly slipped away.

A few years later, in 1894, Wilbraham saw its second experiment with steam-powered travel, this time not on a river, but on Nine Mile Pond. Marshall Lane, proprietor of the Lakeview Inn, located at 2664–2666 Boston Road (the same site where the Auto Inn would later stand), secured a license to operate a passenger steamboat called the Lakeview.

The Lakeview Inn. Joe Roberts

The Lakeview was equipped with a vertical steam boiler and could carry up to twenty-five passengers. It offered a leisurely ride across the peaceful surface of Nine Mile Pond, a pleasant attraction for visitors staying at Lane’s inn. For a short time, it must have been quite a sight, steam drifting over the water as guests enjoyed a tour of the pond.

But like Flibotte’s attempt, this venture, too, was brief. The combined demands of running both the hotel and the steamboat proved overwhelming. After one or two seasons, Lane decided to give up the operation, and the Lakeview was eventually sold to out-of-town buyers.

Today, there are no visible traces of Wilbraham’s steamboat era, no docks, no hulls, no fading photographs of the vessels at work. But for a brief moment in the late nineteenth century, the town embraced the novelty and excitement of steam travel, leaving behind two little footnotes in its long and surprising history.