Our Voyage

After incorporating in 1978 Harry and Howard began collecting artifacts and documents with the ultimate dream of opening a museum focused on preservation and educational programming. By the fall of 1982 Toledo City Council had approved the organization's $5 million development proposal for a 42 acre waterfront museum and park overlooking Maumee Bay.  By the spring of 1984 the city had deemed the plan unfounded and would not turn the property over to a not-for-profit enterprise.  Next WLEHS tried to find a similar arrangement with the Naval Armory at Bay View Park but the accommodations were thought too large, expensive, and outdated for collection housing. Finally in December of 1985, the Historical Society alongside the International Park Commission motioned the city to purchase the recently retired lake carrier Willis B. Boyer for conversion to a museum ship.

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During these years excitement and membership continued to expand. Prominent members and future leaders such as Ray Jex, Bill Glass, Ernst Weaver, Art Wiler, Dick Whitney, Frederick Young, and Ronald Gable were all added to the roster along with countless volunteers and former lake carrier sailors. The Willis B. Boyer opened to the public for tours among ceremony on July 4, 1987 as Toledo celebrated its sesquicentennial.

The 1990s saw the organization providing and maintaining the artifact museum on board,  records and executive offices were also held in non-public areas of the ship.  WLEHS also managed new acquisitions and inventory out of the former ranger station at Ottawa Park in Toledo. The team began building and acquiring ship models of famous Lake Erie vessels. Some prize pieces being the David Dows, the Greyhound, The City of Toledo, the Put-in-Bay, the Arrow, and Chippewa.

In June of 2007 the cash strapped City of Toledo announced it would no longer financially support the museum ship, selling its interest to the Toledo Lucas County Port Authority.  Due to a painful difference in vision, the Western Lake Erie Historical Society was evicted from the boat and the artifact collection and documents sadly removed. The Boyer's prestige and attraction status diminished to complete disuse.

WLEHS now held a landlocked court at the former DeVilbiss factory far from the waterfront in central Toledo. School tours and lecture series were impossible to maintain in the difficult to access building and former industrial grounds. This now depressed era saw a slowing of activities, a dwindling in membership, and the heartbroken death of its original heart strong leadership.

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Today the Western Lake Erie Historical Society is undergoing a great period of revitalization. We have plans for erecting a brand new museum space in Point Place - one of the richest areas for recreational boating in western Lake Erie. In the face of stiff competition we plan on shifting our focus slightly and opening a workshop dedicated to the traditional arts of boat building by hand with carefully shaped timber.  We invite anyone who wishes to get their hands dirty and sail as they did more than a century ago to join us.

Our documents and shipping logs date back to the 1830s, our charts to the 1880s.  Our prize pieces continue to be the Manhattan Range Lights from the Maumee Bay and the original bell from the Cherry Street Bridge in Toledo. The outfit maintains, displays, and sails the very last Toledo built Luedtke Cat Boat from 1946. We are the only organization that strictly focuses on the recreational history of sailing, sail racing, and early powerboat and engine design. 

We have close ties with the Inter-Lake Yachting Association (I-LYA) and the Associated Yacht Clubs of Toledo (AYC) and a shared need with these organizations to know where we have come from. 

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