Posted: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:31 AM - 9,136 Readers
By: Chelsea Duttweiler
When Marion and Marion Fowler looked across the waters of Lake Austin in 1942, they saw something that few others could see: potential. They bought 145 acres of lakefront property before there was even an access road and built Greenshores, a family resort.
"It was a sorry lot at the time, so they got it for cheap," said Dudley Fowler, 81, the couple's oldest son. "They built 21 vacation units, and people would come back every summer just for my mother's catfish. There were families raised at Greenshores in the summertime."
But "the Marions," as they were sometimes called, had bigger plans. They began construction of a wood-paddle riverboat to take guests on tours of the lake, and it became a family project.
The finished boat was christened the Commodore. On Thursday, Dudley Fowler and the boat's current owner, Paul Mahler, celebrated the boat's 60th birthday, making it the oldest of its kind to churn through the waters of the Highland Lakes.
It has seen a lot in the past 60 years, Mahler said. University of Texas fraternity parties were held on the Commodore in the 1950s. It led the way in a Fourth of July boat parade in 1995. Celebrity singers Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey had their wedding rehearsal dinner onboard in 2002.
Dudley Fowler said that he has fond memories of building the vessel and that he and his brothers would race home after college and high school to help out.
"We had kinfolks crawling all over the boat," he said. "It was like a scene from 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,' but with no dancing, singing or fist-fighting."
The boat, which is modeled after a vintage steam engine but runs on diesel, weighs almost 300,000 pounds but can run in water as shallow as three feet, Fowler said.
The family built the boat upside down on land under the direction of Cap Farley, a one-armed shipbuilder, and then flipped it to launch it into the water, Dudley Fowler said. After just five months of building, the boat was given an honorary commission to fly under the historical Republic of Texas Navy flag by Gov. Beauford Jester.
Dudley Fowler and his wife, Carol, built a smaller replica of the riverboat in 1980, named the Commodore's Pup.
With their expanded business, they put out a newspaper advertisement for deckhands in The Daily Texan, and Paul Mahler was one of the first to respond. He began work in 1981 and over the next 18 years became like a son to the Fowlers, Dudley Fowler said.
Mahler bought the Commodore's Pup from the Fowlers in 2002. The following year, he bought the Commodore itself. Fowler and his brothers sold Greenshores a few years ago, and all the resort buildings were torn down to make way for homes, Fowler said.
Mahler said that during the busy season, the boat still does five or six tours of Lake Austin per week with as many as 350 people onboard.
Other boats grace the waters of the Highland Lakes, although many are operated by rechargeable batteries rather than gas.
Mike Pearce, the owner of Lonestar Riverboat, which offers nightly tours to see the bats under the Ann Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, said the battery-operated vehicles are more environmentally friendly: A boat can run for up to eight hours on golf cart batteries.
Branko Milanovic said he was so captivated by the riverboats that he left his job as a carpenter two years ago to buy the Flagship, which operates on Lake Travis. "Business has been down because of the economy, but I believe it will pick up," he said. "This is my dream."
