A significant collection of historical artifacts and rare photographs showed up on board the Delta Queen a little over a month ago when June Antrim of Northwest Georgia walked in unannounced with two plastic bags and asked to speak with a manager.
"I came out and sat down with her," Justin Strickland, director of sales and special events for the Delta Queen, said. Strickland said this not unusual, as many former passengers often stop in to share their stories and personal memorabilia with the current hotel staff.
"The first photo she took out was a builder's photograph which was never known to even exist. The hair stood up on my arms and I knew this was something. I got chills and started tearing up a little bit because I knew how historically significant this was," Strickland said.
The turn of the century photographs originally belonged to Jim Burns, who served as chief of construction, and was a personal friend of the Antrim family.
The collection includes construction photos taken by Burns himself, builder's photos taken in the shipyard in Stockton, Ca., and miscellaneous photos of smaller steamboats that were the inspiration for many of the architectural details built into the Delta Queen.
Several personal items of Mr. Burns, including original brochures, correspondence and artifacts, as well as a steamer trunk full of old tools were also donated.
"The tools were all used on the construction site during the building and most are wood working tools. The last time that tool box was sitting on this floor was probably 1923," Strickland said.
In September 1971 the Delta Queen was contracted to carry U.S. mail and had its own postmark. Staff photo.
Michael Williams, a former captain of The Delta Queen, attended the first public viewing of the donated artifacts Friday afternoon along with over 100 former passengers, crew, and entertainers who were already booked to spend the weekend aboard the docked hotel in Coolidge Park.
"There are things here that we thought were missing in the history of the Delta Queen. Items that we thought were destroyed in WWII," Williams said.
While current operators of the boat are anxious to share the collection with everyone to enjoy, Strickland said the immediate future of the entire collection will be to have everything documented, appraised, professionally archived and digitized, then prepared for potential traveling and interpretive exhibitions.
Built in 1926, the Delta Queen was the last original steam-driven, paddle-wheeled, overnight passenger boat in the United States before being decommissioned. She was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989, inducted into the National Maritime Hall of Fame in 2004, and has been docked at Coolidge Park since 2009.