Tuesday, February 1, 2011

mv. Omar on the Mississippi

Thank you, Jeffery Manning, for sending photos (via Facebook) of the towboat Omar on the Upper Miss last year. Jeffery saw my blog post yesterday about how the Omar was in my area on the Ohio yesterday but I didn't get to see it. I haven't seen the Omar in maybe 20 years.

So here are four of the photos he sent along. Blogger is giving me a hard time about uploading the fifth for some reason. Remember, these photos are the property of Jeffery Manning and are used here solely for purposes of this blog by his permission. They are not to be dowloaded or stored or used or anything like that without his permission.





Thanks, Jeffery.

I never set foot on the Omar, but I did get aboard its twin, the Omega, once. The Omega is now the Erna E. Honeycutt, and it spends all its time on the Mississippi, the lower Ohio and that area -- never up here.

For what it's worth, the Omar shares its name with a small coal mining community in Logan County, W.Va. I've driven through there a few times, but never stopped. I don't know if Omar, W.Va., got its name from a coal company or vice versa.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Most likley you already know this,the first OMAR on the Ohio was built for The Ohio River Company in 1936 and worked on the Ohio untill 1961, The new Omar was built in 1981.There's been a OMAR on the river for 75 years.I hope Ingram never changes her name.My wife and I both have family members who worked on the old Omar

ohio981 said...

I'm pretty sure the original Omar became a showboat type of boat named the Rhododendron and eventually ended up on land in Iowa.

Anonymous said...

You are right about being on land in Iowa,before that she was owned by the state of W.Va.They bought her in 1962. She was sold in 1966 to the City of Clinton,Iowa,where she sit's on dry land today.At least she did not end up in South American like most of the old ORC boats!!! I have a lot of good memories of the OMAR