Welcome to Across Indiana.

While the Hoosier State is considered to be landlocked, in the next half hour, we're going to be exploring Indiana's surprising connection to boating culture and history.

But before we get started, we'll be taking a voyage to our own little slice of Italy.

Old World Gondoliers in downtown Indianapolis offers the romantic settin and sounds of Venice right here in the heartland.

However, our first story takes us far from the Venetian canals, all the way to the banks of the Wabash River, where you won't be finding boats floating, but rather hovercraft... well, hovering.

Across Indiana Producer Kevin Ratermann talks to the Hover Club of America in Terre Haute about their peculiar looking rides.

It's bright and early in Terre Haute, Indiana.

The Wabash River is flowing peacefully past Fairbanks Park.

And it's a great morning to sit, relax and take in the sights Until you notice something odd motoring past.

It dances and scoots across the top of the water, They're called hovercraft.

and they've got a unique connection with the town they're speeding past.

Hi, I'm Terry Chapman.

Welcome to Hoverally 2026.

Terre Haute is playing host to this year's national gathering of hovercraft enthusiasts.

and they happen to be celebrating the 50th anniversary of their own organization, The Hoverclub of America.

Terry Chapman is from Michigan, and he's the co-chair for this year's rally.

So we don't call it a boat.

We don't call it a plane, but we do pilot them because we are flying on air.

We don't have wheels.

We don't have brakes, but it flies above the surface on a cushion of air.

And the surface can be land, water, ice or snow.

You can spin it, drift it, do 360s and all sorts of things, that you can't do again on any other vehicle.

Ervy Greenwaldt is from Wisconsin, and he's been a member of the club for about 15 years.

The closest thing I can compare this to is drifting a car, but also a jet ski.

You have to power through your turns, but you drift through all of your turns, so the direction you're facing isn't always the direction you're traveling.

looking around, you'll see different types, different styles and different features on all of these rides.

and you'll see that they've got just as much personality as the person in the pilot's seat.

the club's been going on for 50 years now.

It's started here.

So it's awesome to come back to where it started.

Back in the 60s and 70s, Hovercrafts were still considered a pretty new and novel idea.

When American enthusiasts started to connect and coalesce, they realized they needed somewhere special to congregate.

Being centrally located and with easy access to the river and nearby lakes, Terre Haute, Indiana wound up being the ideal place.

The Hoverclub of America was founded right here back in 1976, and one of their youngest members at the time was a 14 year old Terry Chapman.

Terry built his first craft that year.

He built his second craft the next, and by 1978, he was racing them right here on the Wabash.

it's everything to me.

So I've been in hovercrafts for 50 years now myself, it's been a tremendous hobby.

It has opened doors to my career.

It's now opening doors for my kids.

And it feels good.

It feels like a reunion.

It feels like family.

In fact, there is a craft that's here today that was at Terre Haute in 1978, the same craft 48 years later.

And I happened to post online an old picture of his craft from 1978.

He got all fired up, pulled the craft out of his barn, cleaned it all up.

It looks pretty darn good.

so that's why I'm here.

I kind of got a personal invite.

And plus, the wife says, get that thing out of storage and bring it down here.

So that's what I did.

John Thompson hauled in this homemade marvel from Illinois.

This is a hovercraft that John built with his own father Back in 1978, as a man in his early 20s, not only did it cost John $1,000 and two months of labor to put this together, It also wound up requiring just a little bit of homemade ingenuity.

we we're a real conservative, and we we wouldn't we didn't waste anything.

The dashboard is, a stop sign The stick for the rudder control is, Eureka vacuum cleaner that we cut and brazed to put it back together.

the rudders are aluminum siding, The lift engine prop fan cover is made out of a floor fan.

That's kind of like the prettiest thing on there, Now there's been a new paint job But it's still the same hovercraft after all these years.

And the club members, they know that this this is something special.

typically when you start to use your hovercraft, it like anything else wears out, wood will rot, paint will peel, things will fall apart, and most people will discard it, put it away, and move on to something new.

His craft is a survivor, I've had this in the back of my shed for fifty years, I mean, we've taken it out.

I probably have 400 miles, 500 miles on this one here.

but I put it away and keep it dried it off, when I'm done.

It's not hard to see why John did all that extra work, though.

He considers that time and money to be very well spent.

Oh every bit of it.

Every bit.

Because I met that gal right over there, on this.

So otherwise it would have never happened.

Maybe, I don't know.

We've been married for lots of years.

Over 40, to be exact.

The Thompsons celebrated that milestone last year.

Just two people out of the many who spent a nostalgic weekend out on the Wabash.

At first it kind of makes you feel old a little bit, but, I get over it, you know, and it's it's pretty cool.

And I love it.

It's a lot of fun.

I sat on this park bench behind me, and I just reminisced about all the times we've been out here As the sun starts to set, the pilots bring their crafts back to shore and wipe down the last traces of mud and dust.

You can tell that it meant a lot to the club members to be back in the city where it all started for them.

I don't come for the hovercrafts anymore.

I come for the relationships, the friendships to renew these friendships, these people that I haven't seen in years.

well a lot of times we only get to see this group of people once, maybe twice a year.

So we always, enjoy coming together, seeing each other in person instead of just talking online meeting the people, listening to different ideas, seeing different ideas and just the camaraderie.

good people, the kind of people that you want in your life who lift you up, don't drag you down and why it's so fun to see them here at this event again.

Paddling back to th Central Canal in Indianapolis.

I wanted to learn more about Old World Gondoliers and its charming concept.

Jeff Hutson is the founder and owner, and he welcomed us to have a chat on one of his 40ft long gondolas.

So they are Italian designed boats.

There's about three boat builders, in the world that create gondolas.

They're made out of eight different types of wood.

And, then there's replacement parts that come continuously.

Because anybody in the boating business knows that boats can be a money pit for sure.

They're they're expensive to maintain.

We've been in business for 27 years.

We started in Chicago in the year 2000 and, operated boats there through 2004.

In 2004, we, also had our first boat in Indianapolis.

We're part of the beautification we are leading the way in the beautification of the city of Indianapolis.

I mean, rarely does somebody complain because somebody is singin a lullaby on the, the waterway, For our next story, I took a trip down to Crane, Indiana, to visit foresters who manage a very special grove of trees for the U.S.

Navy.

That lumber is used to preserve a national treasure over a thousand miles away.

I knew my whole life about the Crane Navy base, but you talk about a lot of people that are out of this region, and they say, where do you work?

You'll see the Crane Navy base like I thought you lived in Indiana.

There's a Navy base in Indiana?

Located just 35 miles southwes of Bloomington sits Naval Weapon Station Crane, our landlocked states one and only navy base.

Naval Weapons Station Crane, is largest naval base in the world by size, behind China Lake in California Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada We're approximately 62,000 acres were 97 square miles And for perspective, we're approximately 33% large than the city of Washington, D.C NWS Crane is tasked with many responsibilities by the Navy, but there's one key feature that makes it pretty unique.

Hiking through the base's 50,000 acre forest, you might walk right past it without even knowing, but Navy Foresters Rhett Steele and Rob McGriff know exactly what they're looking for.

Those are just some white oak leaves that have fallen here.

Out of all the tree species found at Crane, white oak is particularly special because of what it's used for.

The tree has value to everything Indiana that uses it down from wildlife, flooring, furniture, and the Navy historical aspect it's valuable because we use it to make the planks for the USS Constitution.

Based in Boston's Charlestown Navy Yard, USS Constitution is the Navy's oldest commissioned warship and is kept afloat with that sought after Indiana white oak.

To help explain this connection, we sat down with the USS Constitutions resident historian, Margherita Desy.

USS Constitution is the last of the original six warships that were built between 1794 and the last one was launched in 1800.

As American merchants began trading with Mediterranean nations, these ships were constantly harassed by North African pirates known as Barbary Corsairs.

This finally became so much of a problem that in 1794 Congress passed the Naval Armament Act.

So having a navy to defend commerce that is actually what the Navy was designed for originally in the 1790s, was in defense of commerce.

Launched in Boston in 1797, USS Constitutions most famous engagement wouldn't take place until the opening months of the War of 1812.

On August 19th, 1812, USS Constitution engaged the British frigate, HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Captain Isaac Hull of the Constitution closed the distance to point blank range and after just 30 minutes of brutal fighting, HMS Guerriere, with no masts remaining, surrendered.

Along with her first victory at sea, Constitution also earned her nickname during this battle.

An American sailor on Constitution noticed that some of Guerrieres solid shot were hitting Constitutions wooden sides and not penetrating and the sailor exclaimed, “Huzza Her sides are made of iron!

See where the shot fell out?”.

And thats where the nickname Ironsides comes from.

However, a few questions still remain.

Why is white oak so important to the USS Constitution?

And how did a Navy base in Indiana get tasked with supplying it?

Inside NWS Crane's forestry office you'll find robust displays of the wildlife found on the base.

The history of the base itself and USS Constitution memorabilia including real copper paneling from the bottom of the ship and a reproduction cross-section of the hull showing how the white oak from Crane is used.

So outside here, this would be the outside where the water would come up to And these are the white oak planks that Crane would provide.

Then these are the ribs of the hull and these are typically made of live oak.

These would come from like the South Carolinas, places like that And this made up the ribs.

And then on the inside is another set of white oak planks that could come from Crane.

White oak here in New England is actually a native species.

It was very logical to use white oak, and white oak is an incredibly rot resistant wood The white oak have something called “tyloses”.

And basically those tylose plug the pores of the white oak.

That is what allows no water to get into the ship.

So that's what makes white oa so desirable for ships like the USS Constitution.

When the USS Constitution was constructed in the late 1700s.

White oak was very prevalent in the East Coast of the United States.

However, as more people move and towns turned into cities and growth and development occurred finding that white oak was a lot harder to do.

Throughout its long career, USS Constitution has gone through many refits.

but during its restoration in the 1970s for the nation's bicentennial, members of the Navy began seeing issues forming on the horizon.

There was this issue about if the Navy is committing to maintaining and restoring Constitution essentially into perpetuity, then there is going to need to be a pretty ready supply of of the wood that's needed to maintain the ship.

So in 1976, the then commanding officer of USS Constitution, Tyrone Martin, really started to push the Navy to say where is the Navy going to get wood.

You know, Indiana grows some of the best white oak in the world.

And so when they were looking for logs back in the 1970s, I believe it was, they were buying those from some other private entities just off of private land.

There was an actual forester, hes from Pennsylvania, by the name Lynn Andrews.

He was working here in the 70 and he said, why are you buying timbers from private landowners when you have a base here in Indiana that you can get these same quality better quality white oak for free?

So on May 8th, 1976, Constitution Grove was officially dedicated, and NWS Crane has been providing the USS Constitution with a steady supply of white oak ever since.

And it's the job of Navy foresters like Rhett and Rob to identify, manage, and harvest the best trees that nature can provide.

I mean these trees will catch your eye when you walk in the woods.

You'll see a tree is like, oh, there's a nice tree.

We always have a measuring stick so we'll measure them say well put a little dot on our map and there's a potential Constitution Some days you don't see anything whatever we come close to the quality But if there is one out there, we'd find it.

And the white oak that we get are truly spectacular trees.

And in that forest, the the foresters of Crane work closely with the staff here at the Naval History and Heritage Command Detachment Boston selecting trees to be used for Constitution, for ongoing restoration and then future restorations.

What we are looking fo and what Boston wants is, first, we need to have a tree with a diameter large enough.

They can cut these planks that are 14in tall by seven inches wide, up to 40ft So you can imagine what kind of it takes to get a board, or in this case, a plank that size.

They're brought out on flatbed tractor trailers in groups of three to five.

And then we have, large, timber mills here, that we can use to cut those trees up for whatever they're going to be hull planks on the ship if they're going to be used fo the big fighting tops up in the We've got many, many uses for that white oak from Crane.

Clearly, there are people who want to keep the legacy of the USS Constitution alive, as well as keep her afloat for other generations to discover and remember.

From the US sailors who serve aboard her, To the carpenters and artisans who maintain her, and even the personnel at NWS Crane who steward the forest that supports her right here in Indiana.

To think that there is a ship that went out to sea, took cannonballs from enemy fire, and is still afloat.

I think it's important to keep that part of our history and our heritage alive and kinda like keeping one of our founding fathers alive.

Here in the United States, we value our history so much that somehow the Navy will continue to figure out a way to preserve the ship.

After all, the ship is named for the document.

its named for the Constitutio of the United States of America, one of the founding documents that creates this country.

How can you not also keep the ship that has held that name for 225 plus years, and carries that story forward?

For us, it's not the value of the trees or the value of the product that we provide.

It's being abl to support the USS Constitution.

And that's, that's priceless.

It's hard to argue with the fact that the gondoliers here are the stars of the show.

Matteo is one of them and has been serenading th canal for the past eight years.

Well, my name is Aiden Coleman.

I am Matteo during business hours, I am the captain of the gondoliers here at Old World Gondoliers, and have been now for going on eight years.

I would say it's really just great opportunity for practice.

I would say in the abstract, even if you don't have the mos ambitious dreams going forward, it's an excellent place where you can meet up every single day to practice classical music and practice it for a profit and doing it in a fairly elite and well practice environment, We make events here.

That's kind of our whole thing.

I'd say celebratory occasions that we have people for quinceaneras, birthdays, wedding wedding anniversaries.

definitely the biggest part of our job.

Not only is it huge for all of us to have an opportunit to do, to perform as performers and do it in a regular capacity, as a job, but also to have an opportunity to share that happiness with the people who will enjoy the product.

For our last story, we head down to the Ohio River to watch the greatest steamboat race this side of the Mississippi, while also visiting a museum that preserves their legacy.

Every year on the banks of the Ohio River.

Jeffersonville, Indiana has a front row seat to a race that's almost boiling over with history.

It's the Great Steamboat Race.

And since 1963, it has been held like clockwork.

On the Wednesday before the Kentucky Derby.

This year's race is a regional rivalry between the boats, the Belle of Louisville and the Belle of Cincinnati.

They'll steam chug and churn a few miles up the river and back, just to see who's quicker, all the while honoring a unique chapter of American history, a chapter Indiana helped write Just to the left of these boats on the Indiana shoreline is a 132 year old, 22 room, beautiful red brick mansion.

A mansion that houses the Howard Steamboat Museum, Now currently helmed by this expert of American River history.

Hi.

My name is Travis Vasconcelo and I am the director here at the Howard Steamboat Museum.

We are the only museum that covers the story of the steamboat in its entirety, and we are located in the home of the premier steamboat builders on the inland waters.

The Howard family.

Now, when I say the Howard family made a lot of boats, trust me, they made a lot of boats.

We're talking over 1,100 of them.

Travis estimates that during their heyday, that roughly one out of every four steamboats you'd see out on the water was built right here in Indiana.

All of that started with the reputation of just one man, James Howard.

He built his first steamboat back in 1834 while he was still just a teenager.

Anybody that could cut lumber was building a boat when the steamboat first came out, because we were in a hurry to settle the Western lands.

They were built quick, slipshod.

Get them out, get the money.

The average life of a steamboat when James Howard started, if you were lucky, was 18 months to three years.

James Howard saw the problem with the plan and he made his boats more durable.

His boat on average lasted five years.

That reputation for durability allowed this young man's company to not just stand out, but to grow by leaps and bounds.

even after the Civil War, when railroads were becoming more and more popular, The Howards countered the speed and convenience of trains by making their boats much bigger, more luxurious and more expensive.

James Howard's son.

Edmonds took over when his father passed away, and helped usher in this new, elegant era.

Edmonds was one of the pioneers in making the boats more luxurious.

to get people there, they made them like luxury hotels with fancy European carpets.

on the outside, gingerbread starts to show up to make the boat look fancier.

The big fluted stacks show up With every boat the Howards built, more and more wealth was brought into the family, and all of that money helped Edmonds build his 15,000 square foot mansion in 1894, not only was it the first fully electrified home in Jeffersonville, it was built by the same skilled workers that crafted those luxury boats.

Everywhere you look in this house, you will see something hand carved out of either wood, stone or tile.

People come here for the architecture of this building because it's a very ornate richardsonian romanesque building built in the 1890s, which is the perfect era for it.

Built to be just as strong as it is beautiful.

All of the walls are made of solid brick.

To protect it against the flood prone river.

By the early 1900s, it really looked like the Howards were on top of it all.

They had a brand new mansion and their company was known as being the largest inland shipyard in America, as well as being the oldest operated one as well.

But by the 1920s, things started to change for the worse.

When Edmonds passed away, his two sons, Clyde, who was the older son, and Jim, who was the younger son, took over the operation.

Clyde was the businessman.

Jim was the visionary and the dreamer.

Being two different sides of the same coin.

Many thought the shipyard was in good hands as long as the brothers continued to get along.

But it didn't take long for things to go south between them, and Clyde started looking around for the exit.

what ended up happening was Clyde, left, forced Jim to buy him out and went into the banking business in Louisville.

Now the family business rested solely on the shoulders of a dreamer.

a dreamer that would build gasoline engines, race speedboats and take photos.

All those pictures of all those beautiful boats.

Most were taken by Jim, along with another 1,400 other photos he took He got into doing photography with glass plate negatives, which is very involved.

He actually turned one of the rooms of the house into a darkroom, By this point, though, progress had started creeping up on Jim's door.

His boats weren't just competing against trains.

They were competing against cars and trucks now to.

To bring a little savvy into the family business, he made his wife, Loretta, his new vice president.

Here we have Jim and his wife, Loretta, who had run a business before, so she knew how to handle the money, but a dreamer running a business.

Usually in the third generation, things didn't go so well.

they were slow to change.

They were slow to adopt steel construction on boats, which was becoming the thing that we did by then, and if that wasn't enough, the stock market crash and Great Depression struck just a few years later.

And Jim and Loretta were in trouble.

They didn't have a lot of cash to to operate with.

So what ended up happening was they had to find unique ways to make money.

They started renting out rooms in the mansion to people Jim and Loretta limped the company on for another decade, But the writing was on the wall.

When the federal government came knocking in 1941, needing new shipyards for the war effort, Jim and Loretta decided to sell.

one thing I will say about the Howards and this sounds negative, but it really is a positive.

They didn't throw things away.

They kept things.

when the government took over the shipyard, they literally took the Howard files and threw them over the fence into the yard.

Loretta kept everything boxed.

It took care of it.

Keeping, protecting, and sharing that story became Jim and Loretta's passion in their later years.

But Loretta, I think, was the real savior.

She was the steel magnolia of Jeffersonville.

She truly was When her husband died in 1956, it was his dream that this become a museum.

And in a day when women did not do business, she was actually conducting this business.

And she made this a museum and opened it in 1958 and kept it going by herself until 1968, Frankly, the only thing tougher than Loretta Howard is the Howard Mansion itself.

A devastating fire in 1971 couldn't even bring this place down.

it only closed the museum's doors for a year.

It's been open ever since.

Jim you can see he had a great passion for his family's history, and I think that was the impetus that made it a museum.

I think Loretta is who diversified it into it's not just the Howard story, it's what the Howards did to make the big picture story of the steamboat era.

An era that may have ended a long time ago but still hasn't been forgotten.

Thanks to the Howards and to the Belle of Louisville.

The winner of this year's race.

Those stories of riverboats steaming up and down the river will continue to be told, one paddle wheel at a time.

That's all the time we have for today.

Join us next time for another trip Across Indiana.