Steaming into the Future

When the SS Badger entered service in the spring of 1953 for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, she joined a fleet of 17 steam-powered train car ferries operating on the Great Lakes, plus another eight on the Detroit River. It was the twilight of an era that had defined Ludington’s identity for half a century.

Steaming Into the Future tells the story of how that era wound down, vessel by vessel, until the Badger stood alone — the last coal-fired passenger steamship in active service in the United States, and today a National Historic Landmark still sailing between Ludington and Manitowoc, Wisconsin every summer.

The exhibit is part history, part living tribute to a vessel that refused to become a relic — and to the community that rallied to keep her running.