When I first “discovered” the floating boathouses on the Mississippi River several years ago, I was on a Sunday drive to see the migrating waterfowl. It had been a chilly day filled nearly to the brim with enjoyment of river vistas, swans, geese and ducks, when a whim brought me down to the shore, close to the odd little gray floating buildings, to see what they were about.

Little did I know about what I was getting into! That day was the beginning of my life on the river, and the beginning of this book.

After buying a boathouse on the Minnesota side of the river, I became more curious about where boathouses came from, and my search for answers quickly showed that there was very little written about them, and nothing had yet been written that really told their stories and history.

And so began this book. It has been a wonderful experience, studying, interviewing, and writing this volume. People up and down the river have generously met with me, shared pictures, their experiences, and their time. Agency representatives have gone beyond what I expected in helping me learn the legal framework of the river. All the while, I have been lucky enough not only to own a boathouse and spend time on the river, but also to have had the pleasure of writing this book.

I hope you will enjoy it also; it is colorful and comprehensive in scope, weaving together a lot of interesting threads of history, and beginning to tell the stories of the boathouses and the people that built them. It brings together the nuts and bolts of boathouse life, tells of the boathouse communities on the river, and much more.

Martha Greene Phillips