After welcoming Ohio River cruise ships back to Evansville in 2023 for the first time in decades, the city’s tourism agency decided this year to cancel three previously scheduled stops. Those cruises — often aboard American Cruise Lines’ iconic red paddlewheeler — instead are docking in Henderson, Kentucky.
The reason, according to Explore Evansville CEO Tom White, came down to dollars and cents.
“Unfortunately, the financial cost of hosting the boats at Inland Marina just weren’t an effective use of our funds for return on investment,” says White, adding that the issue was one of the first things to confront him after starting the job in March 2025.
Having Inland Marina as a port of call was costing Explore Evansville about $90,000 per year to lease, and the economic benefit of the three scheduled cruises was about $5,000 to $7,000 per cruise, White says.
The cost vs. benefit ratio led White to suggest that the operator, American Cruise Lines, replace Inland Marina with Henderson. But there’s a silver lining, White adds: Passengers still are offered transportation from Henderson to Evansville attractions such as Evansville Wartime Museum, Old Vanderburgh County Courthouse, and a “local loop” that includes Main Street, Reitz Home Museum, the USS LST-325 Ship Memorial, and the Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science. Passengers also have the freedom to head out on their own and visit attractions of their choice.
White says he favors a more economically favorable solution that would again make Evansville a port of call for cruise lines, but it’s not yet clear what that would involve. He notes Inland Marina’s remote location, downriver and disconnected from Evansville’s Downtown, as a hurdle.
“We would like to figure out a way to do it differently, maybe somewhere closer to Downtown, but the challenges of the Ohio River are something we’ve got to figure out,” he says.
White adds that Evansville maintains a good relationship with American Cruise Lines. “They really like Evansville, and we hope to expand that and continue to work closely with them. We just have to have a dock that’s more ideal for them and us,” he says.
The 2023 return of riverboat stops in Evansville was celebrated after their lengthy absence. According to Explore Evansville records, the Delta Queen stopped in the city in 2008, but before that, Evansville hadn’t seen significant riverboat activity since the 1970s.
