[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] you are watching american history tv come all week and every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. are at the shelburne museum outside burlington, vermont where c-span is learning more about the area's history. the us as we board ticonderoga, the last steamship to sale lake champlain. >> the ticonderoga is one of the most visited sites here at the shelburne museum. it just and out as, what the heck is this? what is this big boat doing in the middle of a field? but a big you to come on board -- it begs you to come on board. here at the shelburne museum,

it's a campus of structures that sit on about 40 acres, and it is a village setting in many respects. but within that village, every structure houses an amazing collection. in 1947, amassed an amazing collection that the shelburne museum houses amongst 39 buildings. it's a plethora of objects and collections within collections, from impressionist art to weathervanes to cigar store indians and one of the largest objects she collected, which was steamboat, which applied the waters of lake champlain from 19 6-1953. as i said, int, 1906, which you can look at as

the cost or the changeover from spe steam era -- the cu from the steam era to the internal combustion engine. she was one of 29 steamers built on the lake and she was the last one. she basically operated on lake champlain as a day boat. long,ke is over 125 miles but the ticonderoga ran from the vermont shoreline to the new -- new yorkne shoreline. her homeport was burlington, vermont. the passages were about an hour or an hour and a half, but she had her regular scheduled that she kept two. it was owned and operated, the champlain transportation company and the lake george steamship company, by the delaware and hudson railroad company. it kept a really tight time schedule for the steamers.

you could board a train in new york city, heading up to burlington, vermont, but you had to go on the new york shoreline and up to lake george. you got on a steamer there, you got off that steamer, got on another train, go up further along the shore and go up to westport and for the ticonderoga and sale to burlington the next day. so it was a link in the transportation network of the time. through most of her time on the lake, she ran a regular route with the delaware and hudson railroad company, on a very strict schedule between the shores of vermont and new york state. but by the time that you got into the mid-19 20's, late 1920's, things started to change. there was a lot more mobility for folks. people had gone to road transportation. the roads were much better. and in 1929, a bridge was built and crossed lake champlain,

that to the big cotton out of the ticonderoga's usage, in terms of ridership. from that time forward, into the depression years, there was three years there were the ticonderoga didn't run because of financial constraints. there was nobody running it. but prior to that you had world war i, which is quite amazing, the fact that the ticonderoga survived that, and world war ii, a cousin of the need of materiel for the war efforts. were of vessels decommissioned and scrapped and it'sose times almost like the ticonderoga was saved in the backwaters of the backwaters of vermont where it wasn't noticed much erie so it kept steaming through those eras and at the same time he kept its same aged, the same:-fired h me col h --

al-fired engine. when you commit to the depression, and surely after delaware ande hudson company decided we are not going to run that champlain transportation company anymore, we can make ends meet with these steamers anymore, they are antiquated, so a private investor came along and the ticonderoga and the champlain transportation company. he was interested in a high-speed ferry and kept the ticonderoga running as a steamboat, more of an excursion boat. but he also ran into trouble because of the cost of running it. the cost of coal was rising. in the late 40's, decided to get out of the steamboat business and went with the high-speed ferries, and he sold it.

and essentially, to individuals purchased it and kept it running . they were former captains of the going they kept the ti for those years. and they were instrumental in terms of saving the ti from the scrappy. like others, they ran into financial problems and then it became -- he convinced electric for thease the ti museum. and in 1953, after three years of the museum running the ticonderoga on the water, they had difficulty finding engineers to operate her. the boilers were tired. had to be inspected every year, and the amount of money that would have to go into them to make them passable again, it was too much to sustain. so electra and the board of the museum decided not to run the tech anymore.

they were considering scrapping thought, let's bring it to a museum. so here we are, two miles from the lake, a 900 ton vessel on land. a kind of defies the imagination, of how it got here, but is quite a feat and it's took a good solid year of planning. viait was pulled basically rail, they built a double railway system and hauled it through the woods and fields and across another operating railroad track, to bring it here to the grounds of the museum in 1955. keep in mind that when a vessel is on the water, and operating, it has a crew. the ticonderoga had a crew of operated thenly vessel and nature the passengers were comfortable but they also maintain and keep up the vessel. so when it came overland to the

museum, it lost that crew. museum had another structure and already had many museums by then and a fairly small and limited crew of masons and workmen and carpenters and painters to upkeep those buildings. but now they had a 220 foot side wheel steamboat to maintain. so it was difficult, to say the least. i stepped on board as the and project manager of that crew, of that effort. it initially i thought would take us three years. it turned out to be five and a half years. tearingonce you start into her, you start to see that the insulation has gone much deeper. 1993-1998, where apartentially took the ti

and put her back together again, all in line that she is a national historic landmark. she got national historic landmark status in 1963 and is one of the first vessels to achieve that. it's quite significant. most of the other wards were given to buildings, historic structures. , we had a dutya and an obligation, of course, to preserve as much of the vessel as possible in that restoration project, in that process. it was humbling to be able to work on that, from that perspective, tumbling to look at the hiss -- humbling to look at and whatry of the ti she represented, because at that time she was the last of her type in the world. so we knew we had to do our very best, and perhaps that is why it

took a few years more than what we had initially anticipated, because we felt obligated to do it right. the ticonderoga is so important for future generations, not only are current generation, and the families who visit here today. but it isn't so important to preserve as a key element of our national heritage, our maritime heritage, the last remaining side wheel steamboat that you touchtually go aboard and different areas of it and see what it was like to be on board. and it is something that is key maritimetional heritage for this country. it's still in existence, to be able to >> our cities tour stuff recently went to burlington,

vermont to learn about its rich history. learn about burlington and other stops on our tour at c-span.org. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. up next on "the civil war," a panel discusses the context in which civil war monuments were constructed and what they came to symbolize. the natural history center -- national history center hosted this three hour-long event. good morning, i am the executive director of the american historical association and the chair of the board of the national history center him up for anybody who has 25 minutes after the session to explain the relationship, i am happy to do it. before we start, i want to welcome everybody. this is a congressional briefing on monuments with special attention to conra