Dan River Queen
By Beverly Belcher Woody
One of the best memories of my childhood was riding on the Dan River Queen. I am not alone in this sentiment. Not a week goes by that someone doesn’t mention to me how much they miss the Dan River Queen. This week, it was my cousin Connie Boyd Harvey and my uncle Dennis Asbury. Our discussion transported me back to 1972; I was in Mrs. Crystal Fain Roberson’s second grade class at Stuart Elementary. I can remember the excitement, like it was yesterday, as our class rode the school bus up the mountain. We were going on a REAL riverboat ride!
The Dan River Queen was a stunning beauty, all fifty-two feet of her. She was constructed in Kentucky and transported in two parts to the 17-acre lake at Cockram’s Mill. She could carry 100 passengers at one time and there was always a line of people waiting for their chance to ride. Excitement would build even before climbing aboard the beautiful craft; you could hear her coming long before she rounded the bend. Calliope music would be heard coming from her steam whistles along with the clang, clang, clang of her bell. She was painted white and trimmed in red, yellow, blue, green, and black. Wooden cutouts of hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs and colored strings of lights bedecked her two-story frame.
As she approached and started to slow, the chug, chug, chug of the water flowing through her steam-powered paddlewheels let people know they would soon be embarking on a half-hour journey around the lake. My seven-year-old self can remember the thrill of stepping from the dock to the gangplank and seeing the waters of the Dan River beneath my feet.
The state room was filled with “one-armed bandits,” a roulette wheel, and a bar that served sarsaparilla. The boat’s big bell came from a railroad engine and the huge pilot wheel came from a cargo ship. I jockeyed for a better position near one of the paddlewheels while our class rode to the picnic shelter that was located on the “backside” of the lake. We had a picnic lunch before begrudgingly having to leave for our trip back down the mountain. Our ride on the Dan River Queen came to an end much too soon, but I am so grateful that I was in the niche that had an opportunity to ride the beautiful riverboat.
The Dan River Queen was the brainchild of Shirley H. Mitchell, who was born on a tobacco farm in Stokes County, North Carolina. Mitchell purchased Hennis Freight Lines in 1946 and turned it into (according to the Winston-Salem Journal) the largest independently-owned trucking company in the world.
In the early 1960s, Mitchell purchased 2,000 acres along U.S. 58 in the Vesta area. He started the Circle M Zoo, which featured over a hundred different types of animals and a zoo train tour. According to the Danville Register, in 1965, between 1,500 and 5,000 people visited the zoo each weekend.
Mitchell decided his next attraction would be the Dan River Queen. Mitchell, his two-year old granddaughter Cheryl, and Delegate Dan Daniel christened the riverboat on August 1, 1967. Sadly, only ten years later, the Dan River Queen, Circle M Zoo, and all of Mitchell’s property went on the auction block. According to Tom Seig, in a 1985 article from the Winston-Salem Journal, “$60 million, a trucking fiefdom, a dozen homes, 116 antique cars, a 2,000-acre Virginia mountain retreat complete with a zoo and a riverboat were all gone.”
I suspect there are many in the community that were left with unpaid contracts and don’t remember these times very fondly, I completely understand that. But to me and several thousand fifty- and sixty-year old’s all over southside Virginia, a ride on the Dan River Queen was and will always be one of the greatest experiences of our childhood.
(Woody may be reached at rockcastlecreek1@gmail.com.)
