Minnesota Centennial Showboat

In 1957, Whiting and the Centennial Commission's Tom Swain learned that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planned to retire the General John Newton, a 175-foot (53 m) sternwheeler towboat built in 1899.

Minnesota Senator Edward J. Thye helped to arrange its transfer to the university for the symbolic fee of one dollar.

Miss Minnesota Diane Albers, assisted by Doc Whiting and Centennial Commission Chairman Peter Popovich, christened the boat by breaking a bottle of champagne across the bow.

Mayor Joseph E. Dillon of Saint Paul rang the ship's original bell to invite the theater's first patrons aboard.

It stopped for scheduled performances in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Stillwater, Hastings, Red Wing, Wabasha, and Winona.

Following that season, it made an appearance in the Swedish film The Emigrants before settling into a stationary mooring site on the river's east bank, below Coffman Memorial Union.

However sparks from a welder ignited a fire that destroyed the boat on the evening of January 27, 2000, just months before its scheduled reopening.

[2] The showboat program earned the Tourism Partner of the Year Award from the Saint Paul Convention and Visitors Bureau in 2004.

The Padelford Packet Boat Company joined the university's Department of Theatre Arts & Dance to create the C. Lance Brockman Showboat Scholarship later that year.

Olios are musical entertainment pieces performed either between scenes or as an afterpiece to relieve the tension created by the melodrama and its serious storyline.

Olios have been a favorite among the Showboat audiences, and this was mainly due in part to Bob Moulton drawing upon his talents as a dancer, costumer, choreographer, and director.