Day-trip destination: Cardboard Boat Museum near Cincinnati buoyed by Ohio River regatta
NEW RICHMOND, Ohio — Finding a maritime museum near a navigable body of water isn’t unusual. Finding one devoted to corrugated paper boats, however, is.
In fact, the New Richmond Cardboard Boat Museum (www.cardboardmuseumnr.com) claims to be unique, which isn’t hard to believe.
New Richmond, on the Ohio River in Clermont County about 25 miles east of Cincinnati, has a rich history as a steamboat town and a hotbed of the anti-slavery movement.
The town’s reputation as America’s cardboard boat capital is more recent. But each year during the town’s annual International Cardboard Boat Regatta, there’s no denying that New Richmond is to cardboard vessels what Newport, Rhode Island, is to luxury yachts.
The first regatta began in 1993 as a lark, a last-minute promotion for downtown business owners during the town’s popular Fourth of July celebration.
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But the event apparently tapped a pent-up demand for rideable cardboard boat racing and has grown into its own soggy celebration, drawing hundreds of boaters and thousands of spectators each August from as far away as Honolulu and Helsinki, Finland.
And eventually, it spawned an entire museum.
New Richmond's Cardboard Boat Museum: Fascinating and fun
The nonprofit Cardboard Boat Museum relies on a large team of volunteers, said Tom Lemon, who has been racing in the New Richmond regatta for 20 years and helped found the museum with his regatta team members in 2007.
The watercraft displayed in the museum are colorful, whimsical and, most notably, made of cardboard — but are not as ephemeral as one might think.
In fact, most of the boats on display have already proven their river-worthiness, many as participants in the annual regatta.
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Museum visitors will see a wide variety of boats. Although the hull of each is constructed with only cardboard, duct tape and waterproof paint, the crafts exhibit a wide variety of complexity. Some look built for speed, others strictly for laughs — most, perhaps, for a bit of both.
The boats range from tiny one-paddler affairs to 12-person speedsters, and from traditional kayak-style boats to those made to resemble historic Ohio River paddlewheelers.
Many don’t even resemble boats. Several hot rods, a school bus and a steam locomotive at least look like they were meant to hold passengers. But there’s also a 10-foot guitar, supersized coffee cup and a Wile E. Coyote-style sit-atop missile (although I’d suggest steering clear of boats built by Acme Co.).
The regatta, which this year will be on Aug. 6, is held on a short stretch of the Ohio River just behind the riverfront museum.
Spectators can watch from the pretty waterfront park in downtown New Richmond and from the museum’s own large riverside deck.
Cardboard boats may be an intrinsically whimsical mode of transportation, but regatta participants can be quite competitive. They vie for dozens of trophies and bragging rights in many categories including speed; creativity; and, because these are, after all, cardboard boats, the most dramatic sinking — dubbed, of course, the Titanic Award.
The museum also offers classes in building the boats, and volunteers build and raffle off custom-designed boats before each year’s regatta as a museum fundraiser. (Many of the museum-built boats have gone on to win their regatta categories.)
New Richmond’s picturesque downtown also offers several good local places to grab a bite or a drink. Visitors can also pick up a New Richmond Historic Walking Tour brochure (www.newrichmond.org) at downtown businesses and check out the two dozen listed points of interest, including several connected with prominent abolitionists.
Those looking for more to do in Clermont County will find many nearby diversions, including the lovely Cincinnati Nature Center (www.cincynature.org). The center’s Rowe Woods site, about 15 miles north of New Richmond, encompasses more than 1,000 acres and features a nature center, more than 14 miles of hiking trails through a wide variety of habitats, and a large children’s play area,
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Just a few miles southeast of New Richmond is Point Pleasant, the birthplace, 200 years ago this year, of future President Ulysses S Grant. Grant’s birthplace (www.ohiohistory.org) is an Ohio History Connection site and tells the story of Grant’s humble beginnings.
For more information about more things to see and do in the area, visit www.discoverclermont.com.
Steve Stephens is a freelance travel writer and photographer. Email him at sjstephensjr@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Cardboard Boat Regatta makes Ohio River town worth a visit
