FORT MADISON – Work to get the Old Fort reopened by Memorial Day is ongoing, but Old Fort Director Dr. Eugene Watkins said more work, and more volunteers are needed.
Watkins gave the Fort Madison City Council an update on the status of improvements and work being done at Tuesday’s meeting. He said more work dates are being planned.
“The big thing going on is preparation for the season. We started our volunteer stuff on the 14th and 15th and we had 11 volunteers overall for the two days so not a bad turnout,” Watkins said.
He said it was productive and a lot of the winter leaves and debris were removed. Some worn fencing has also been removed.
He said work like chicken coop repair and stone removal has been accomplished and benches have been scraped to be painted. There will be another workday Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. and a workday on Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon.
He said security setups for the gift shop are in place and phone lines are next to be moved.
Contract work is planned for reroofing Block House 3 and then the gift shop will be moved into that structure.
“I’m hoping to have some volunteers this time around to hopefully work on removing some of the cement chinking and so we hope to get that out of the building and get it replaced with some synthetic stuff,” Watkins said.
Chinking is the course elastic material between the logs in the building walls.
He said more painting and moving the blacksmith shop is also on the schedule, but he said he wanted to wait for some of the other bigger demolition to be done. Then he said some heavy cleaning and display setting needs done before the season opening in May.
Watkins said there are 28 American Cruise Line dockings scheduled this year and 12 Viking Cruises visits from Burlington.
Councilwoman Rebecca Bowker asked what volunteers should bring and expect at the work sessions.
“I would bring gloves. We have a lot of the hand tools now. We have some hammer drills, but we haven’t tried that yet (on the chinking), but tools like that,” he said.
“We do have water and the pavilion is open for restrooms.”
Councilwoman Donna Amandus said the city will put some portapotties down on the site for volunteers.
“I’m going to ask my ward to step up and if anyone wants to donates cookies or snacks to the volunteers - if you can’t volunteer - that’s great,” she said.
“If you can’t do any work, you can always help sign people in and get waivers signed. We need volunteers. This is coming up.”
Mayor Matt Mohrfeld said the Potowonok Circle is going to contribute $1,000 for the Fort repair, which would cover 50% of the hard cost of shingles on the first building after Building Materials offered a discount.
“That would be a nice challenge out there for someone that was looking for a very specific thing to put in another donation for the other half of that hard cost,” he said.
City Building director Doug Krogmeier said he’d been working on the construction side of the things.
“Looking at roofing contractors, the toughest part is really scheduling. Everyone is booked out several months. I’m looking at putting together a list of guys I trust to kind of get this done in house,” Krogmeier said.
He said he was hoping to get the roofing started on April 29 which would take a day or day-and-a-half.
He said the city will start moving the gift shop first, but they will need some chainsaw expertise for cutting new poles. He is also looking for some help running equipment and experience to make that work easier.
The river levels are also a concern, he said.
“We’re up to almost 17 (feet) now. I don’t know how well we’re going to be able to get equipment in there and then drive around soil that is saturated. It’s quite a bit of progress and we’ll see how it goes.”
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