COMMUNITY

As owners prepare to sell beloved Willamette riverboat, they say it was all about making memories

Barbara and Richard Chesbrough pose for a photo inside the Willamette Queen on June 15, 2021. (Saphara Harrell/Salem Reporter)

Richard Chesbrough likes to tell people he’s the only person you’ve ever met who’s married 350 women.

And he’s got the paperwork to prove it.

After captaining the Willamette Queen for more than two decades he’s been the officiant for hundreds of weddings. The beloved sternwheeler sits at the dock in front of Riverfront Park, having been the site of many a birthday party, fundraiser, field trip or graduation party.

But now the Chesbroughs are selling the boat, with hopes that it will stay on the Willamette River.

Barbara Chesbrough, 75, said she and her 80-year-old husband are ready to retire.

“We love it, we want to see somebody take it over and it’s up to them whether they keep doing what we’re doing or whether they change it entirely,” Barbara said. They’re seeking about $800,000 for the boat and business, she said.

A trip on the sternwheeler has been the source of many fond memories.

Richard remembers hosting a party for a man celebrating his 106th birthday.

The man, Erwin Becker, told Richard one of the things on his bucket list was to be aboard a sternwheeler.

“He said, ‘Is it possible I could come up and steer the boat for a little bit?’” Richard recalled.

“I said, ‘Erwin, at your age you could do whatever you want. Come on up.’ And then I couldn’t get him out of there. He was having such a great time,” he said.

When Becker died a couple months later, one of his daughters told Richard he talked about that trip up until the time he passed.

“It made that much of an impression on him,” Richard said.

Barbara added, “It’s all about making memories. That’s always been our thing.”

The Chesbroughs met in 1996 while they were both working in Corvallis as realtors.

They went to a Christmas party where Barbara bought Richard a raffle ticket. He was reluctant to buy one himself but ended up winning a vacation and took Barbara with him on the trip. 

“We’ve just kind of been together ever since then,” she said.

A lifelong sailor, Richard wanted to teach his wife how to sail.

On a trip up to Seattle to look at a sailboat, they spotted what would become the Willamette Queen in dry dock.

Instead, they came home with a riverboat built in 1990 as a scaled-down likeness of the former Mississippi and Yukon Territory riverboats with paddles that propel them.

“I called my daughter and I said, ‘We’re coming home with a boat, but not the one you sent us to go see,’” Barbara recalled.

Salem has a rich history of boat travel on the Willamette River, with 55 steamboats traversing the waters from 1850 to 1916, Richard said. That era ended as rail and road travel became more popular.

Richard said all of those boats are still on the river, just sitting under the water.

“They’re all lost for one reason or another. Some of them caught fire, some of them just hit stuff and sank. Others blew up. All sorts of stories,” he said.

Richard said Salem was a riverboat landing so farmers could get their hay to market, because the dirt roads between Salem and Portland were unusable most of the year.

Despite its namesake, the Willamette Queen doesn’t look like the boats that used travel the river. Its likeness is more akin to a passenger boat. As Richard says it “has more gingerbread,” meaning there are more decorative frills.  

When they brought the boat home, they were originally based in Albany. They came to Salem in 1998 and have been operating the boat in front of Riverfront Park ever since.

Barbara had always wanted a restaurant and envisioned making the boat into a fine dining destination.

They married their two passions, hers for cooking and his for boating and started their business.

“You’re sort of always doing parties,” Barbara said.

They do birthdays, weddings, fundraisers, host VIPs for river events, New Year’s Eve parties, the list goes on.

During school field trips, Richard gives history lessons to kids and lets them drive the boat to receive a junior captain certificate.

“I can’t tell you how many tens of thousands I’ve done already,” he said.

He said kids will hold onto those certificates, get them framed and take them to school.

The pair have been operating for so long that some of those kids grew up to have their own weddings on the boat.

“A lot of them when we ask them how they found out about us, it’s like ‘I have a certificate hanging up on my wall when I was here in fourth grade.’” Barbara said.

As they prepare to sell, the Chesbroughs said people from Independence and Newberg have expressed interest in buying the boat. They had a buyer lined up within the past year, but after he was struck in a car crash the deal didn’t work out.

The pair said when they sit down with people who are interested in buying the boat, they know fairly quickly if they’d be a good fit for the venture.

“It’s kind of like picking a boyfriend for your daughter or something, you want to make sure she gets the right guy,” Richard said. 

Richard and Barbara Chesbrough pose for a photo in front of the Willamette Queen on June 15, 2021. (Saphara Harrell/Salem Reporter)

Contact reporter Saphara Harrell at 503-549-6250, [email protected]

JUST THE FACTS, FOR SALEM – We report on your community with care and depth, fairness and accuracy. Get local news that matters to you. Subscribe to Salem Reporter starting at $5 a month. Click I want to subscribe!