Museum in General

    The Steamboat Arabia and most of its cargo are now at the Steamboat Arabia Museum.  The museum offers tours for people who want to learn more about the Arabia, and everything on it.  The museum holds the contents of an 1856 general store.  It shows a slice of history and makes you see history in a whole new light.

             The founders of the museum (Jerry Mackey, David Luttrell, Bob Hawley, David Hawley, and Greg Hawley) made it different than any other museum.  Most museums are a collection of many different items that are in one category.  The Steamboat Arabia Museum is a collection of items from just one steamboat.  For example, an art museum has paintings by all kinds of people, instead of paintings by just one person.

             Lots of work went into creating the museum.  The steamboat, steam engines, and boilers were so large they had to be put in before the roof!  Even the heating and cooling system had to be changed to preserve the artifacts.  Several hundred people helped the founders create the museum.  To construct the museum, some people worked 90-100 hours per week for four months.  Union workers would work during the day such as plumbing and heating, and the founders of the museum and their families would work during the night. Union workers are workers sent by the owner of the building to do jobs.  By July 1991 most of the construction was completed.  The Steamboat Arabia Museum opened with a formal ribbon cutting ceremony on November 13, 1991 for the public to see.

             As well as having hundreds of volunteers, they also had five rich friends who helped them financially.  Creating the museum ended up costing much more than they expected.  They knew it would be expensive, but they never thought it would be as expensive as it ended up being.  The total amount borrowed to make the museum turned out to be $1,450,000.00!