Of all the people in Kentucky and Illinois who have been affected by the month-old shutdown of the private ferry in this Ohio River village, Amos Mast may be among the most inconvenienced.
Mast lives outside Marion, Ky., directly across the Ohio River from Cave-In-Rock. By ferry, it takes him about seven minutes to cross the river to the Illinois side where he works as a carpenter and where, on weekends, he sells fresh sweet corn and famously good tomatoes-produce that has helped him feed and clothe nine children over the years.
But without the local ferry to transport him across the river, Mast, 57, must go to the nearest bridge-35 miles upriver at Shawneetown, Ill.-and then make his way back down another 35 miles to Cave-In-Rock.
For nearly anyone else, this trip might take an hour and a half by car. But for Mast, it might easily take a week or more.
The wiry, bearded Kentuckian is Amish, and his standard mode of transportation is a horse and buggy. “Of course we wouldn’t even try to make that big of a trip with a horse, especially in this heat,” he noted.
Fortunately for Mast’s horse, some of the carpenter’s loyal customers have been willing to drive 280 miles a day to pick him up, bring him over to Illinois and take him back at night. His current customer hired a local fisherman to personally ferry Mast across the 3,500-foot-wide river each day in a johnboat.
But Mast is still having trouble getting his farm produce across the river. He can get only so many of those big tomatoes into his tool box, he said.
“What hurts the most is that my vegetables are ripe and I don’t know where else to sell them,” he said. “But believe it or not, some from Illinois have been driving all the way over just for the tomatoes.”
Located about 340 miles down Halsted Street (Illinois Highway 1) from Chicago and packed tightly against the Ohio River beneath vaulting stone bluffs that contain a historic cavern, the river town of Cave-In-Rock, population 450, has long had an island mentality.
“Did you think you’d run out of state before you got here?” asked Marda Smith, the cook at Dutton’s Cafe, where breakfast is no longer being served because of the loss of the river ferry traffic through town.
Key part of the economy
The Cave-In-Rock ferry has been running as long as local memory goes back-some claim it dates to 1812. No mere curiosity, the ferry was vital to this remote town in a sparsely populated region where even Hardee’s and Subway have yet to establish outposts.
Generally open only between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. in recent years, the ferry transported 55 vehicles a day on average, at $5 per vehicle. Its regular riders included logging and quarry trucks, funeral home ambulances, school buses carrying teams and fans, Amish in their horse-drawn buggies, Illinoisans who work and shop in Kentucky, and Kentuckians who do the same in Illinois.
The ferry, which docked literally at the southernmost end of Illinois Highway 1, gave tiny Cave-In-Rock quick access to the nearest major interstate (I-24 in Kentucky) and also linked residents to Marion, Ky., which has only about 3,300 people but offers essential retail and service businesses, not to mention the biggest hospital within 60 miles.
For many years, the ferry boat pilots gave out their home phone numbers to expectant mothers for emergency runs across the river to the Kentucky hospital, where most of southeastern Illinois’ babies were born until the ferry stopped running.
“I used to gripe about the ferry’s prices, but you know, you never miss water ’til the well runs dry,” said Eva Winters, one of a half-dozen nurses who live in Illinois but work at the Crittenden Hospital in Marion.
“If this doesn’t get resolved pretty quickly, I’ll probably have to quit,” Winters said. “I’m the clinical coordinator at nights and it’s too hard making that drive on those small country roads after working all night.”
Tourist industry suffering
Although Cave-In-Rock has never drawn the streams of tourists that its residents yearn for-and that the picturesque region deserves-its small tourism industry has also been hurt by the shutdown of the ferry.
“Our lodging in July of last year was at 99 percent capacity, but we are down 10 to 15 percent this year,” said Jane Clark, who operates the Cave-In-Rock State Park Lodge and Restaurant high on the river bluff above the village.
“The most uncomfortable part of all this is that people from Illinois still get here but they are frustrated about having to drive so far if they want to get over into Kentucky. They hate it and we hate it,” she said.
Janice Foster, a clerk at the B&B Country Store in Cave-In-Rock, noted that tourists often drove to the area just to ride the ferry back and forth across the river because it provided them with the best views of the gaping opening to the famous cave that gives the village its name.
The Illinois tribe believed the river bluff cave, which is 200 feet deep, was home to the Great Spirit, Manitou. In pioneer days, river pirates lured unwary settlers into the cave by posing adventurous women in the entrance and advertising it as a “Liquor Vault and House of Entertainment.”
Now, in the summer, the cave is a lure for hikers, bicyclists and picnickers who come to enjoy this most forested part of Illinois. “Just last week we had a woman who drove two hours with her kids to come and ride the ferry,” Foster said. “She couldn’t believe it was closed.”
The loss of the ferry has hit Illinois residents hard. And it has been equally tough on the Kentuckians across the river.
“I face the potential of losing several nurses in the near future,” said Michele Boyce-Obenchain, the hospital’s vice president of nursing, who noted that many other area businesses-everything from chiropractors to grocery stores-have been adversely affected.
“I know of one local 84-year-old gentleman whose wife is in a nursing home on the Illinois side. Now he has to drive all the way around three times a week to see her,” she said.
Man behind the shutdown
You’ll hear all sorts of explanations as to why the Cave-In-Rock ferry shut down, but mostly, it seems the ferry’s owner, Tom Patton, got weary of dealing with a high-maintenance, low-reward enterprise.
Residents and government officials in southern Illinois came to regard his ferry as public transportation, and they demanded service without contributing to the high cost of operation, Patton said.
“The mayor wanted us to run 24 hours, and I said if you want it 24 hours I’ll run it 24 hours but you’ll have to keep the bank open 24 hours and the restaurant open 24 hours and then we’ll stay open too,” Patton growled.
“(The mayor) said, `We can’t do that.’ And I said, `You damn fool, neither can we!’ “
Patton noted that over the years, he repeatedly had asked state officials on both sides of the river for subsidies for the ferry. They promised to help, but never came through, he said.
“We’re not parasites, we’re taxpayers. We’ve been standing on our own without the help of anybody all these years. Now they can drive over or swim over or do what they damn well please. We’re done,” he stated.
Wealthy and cantankerous, Patton, 77, has owned the Cave-In-Rock ferry for 20 years. The tall and lean former river pilot has the gruff demeanor of the famous general who shared his surname, and he commands respect in the region.
He drives a red Cadillac and is known to have many financial interests in southern Illinois, ranging from banks to fluor spar mines and tow boats.
Although he is a hard-nosed businessman, Patton has a love of the river and this region, and a benevolent side. He carries candies in his pocket for local kids, is concerned for the welfare of his employees, and he has contributed no small amount to area hospitals, locals said.
Business is business
But Patton is no longer willing to subsidize a non-profit transportation system, even though the loss of the ferry has devastated the region, he said. Patton closed his ferry because it was becoming too difficult and costly to keep it running any longer, he said.
He cited problems in finding and keeping licensed river pilots, who made more than $700 a week on the ferry but could make more towing barges or piloting gambling boats. The Cave-In-Rock ferry had been operating 12 hours a day with only one pilot, Jim Littrell.
“From April 26th until we shut down, I took off only one day,” said Littrell, who is now drawing $100 a week unemployment.
The ferry’s operational problems were magnified last month when Patton’s son, Bill, who managed it, was hospitalized with a stroke, Patton said. “I’ve had two or three opportunities to sell it away from here and if the state doesn’t buy it, it’s going,” he said flatly.
State transportation officials in both Illinois and Kentucky have been scrambling to get ferry service restored as quickly as possible, but the process has been a complicated one, they said.
Although the Illinois Department of Transportation owns and operates two free 24-hour ferries on the Illinois River-at Brussels and at Kampsville-this would be the first publicly owned ferry that crosses state boundaries, said Dick Adorjan, a spokesman for the department.
“We’ve been trying to work with Kentucky because obviously this serves both states,” he noted.
One consideration is that Illinois does not charge for its public river ferries, while Kentucky does. It may be that those who ride from the Kentucky side will pay, while those who come over from Illinois will not, officials said. Counties whose residents are the primary users may be asked to help the states subsidize the ferry, which will probably operate on a 12-hour daily schedule unless demand increases.
It’s going to be costly
Another factor that has slowed the reopening of ferry service is Patton’s reportedly steep buyout price for his ferry boat equipment and property. The cost of re-establishing ferry service has been estimated to be between $300,000 and $500,000, though neither side is saying exactly how much Patton wants. The states have projected that the ferry has brought in only about $100,000 a year in recent years.
Patton has rejected the state’s counteroffer to rent his equipment, rather than purchasing it from him. “Some have offered to lease it, but in a year or two I’d get it back all tore to hell,” he said.
The two states are now considering the option of bringing in a new operator with his own ferry, officials said. “Mr. Patton did not want to continue to operate and he did not want to lease his equipment to us, so we will probably contract with private operators,” Adorjan said.
At least five potential operators have been identified-including one who said he could begin ferrying passengers within 72 hours of signing an agreement, according to Don Kelly, Kentucky’s secretary of transportation.
Kelly said he is hopeful to have a ferry running between his state and Illinois within a few weeks. But just recently another complication surfaced.
Even if the states bring in a new operator with his own equipment instead of meeting Patton’s price, they will have to buy the privately held landing site on the Kentucky side of the river.
The owner of Kentucky’s landing site? None other than Tom Patton.
“I’m not going to sell the land without selling the ferry,” said Patton. “Why would I do that? That would be foolish.”
