Lake Austin's longest-serving riverboat hits 60

[KevinFromTexas]

http://www.statesman.com/news/conten...riverboat.html

Lake Austin's longest-serving riverboat hits 60

Built as a family project on the lakeshore, the Commodore others to ply the Highland Lakes waters.

By Chelsea Duttweiler
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

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 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.