An old lady with ties to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is stuck in the mud on the banks of the Muskingum River in Marietta, Ohio.

The steamer Becky Thatcher, formerly named the Mississippi III and the precursor to the Mississippi IV that is on land between Levee and Washington streets near City Front, traveled the Mississippi from 1926 to 1961 before being decommissioned.

It became a steamboat museum in St. Louis, but fell into financial and physical disrepair. The Ohio Showboat Drama bought the boat in auction and moved it to Marietta — a town on the Muskingum River near the Ohio — in 1975 in preparation for the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The boat served as a restaurant and theater and provided a dockside attraction for Marietta. It sank in 1984, but was salvaged. The hull was replated in 1985, wrote Jeff Norrington, curator of the Howard Steamboat Museum in Jeffersonville, Ind.

Several years later, the Ohio company that owned the boat sold the decaying vessel for $65,000. An extensive renovation turned the boat into a sparkling attraction, but it stayed open only briefly. The boat had become stuck on the muddy river bottom, where it remains today.

Marietta city officials want to evict the boat and its owner, Jeffrey Levin of Nashville. Levin has told the Marietta Times newspaper that he has contracted to move the boat to Pittsburgh, although the move will be financially and logistically troubling. Added to that, Marietta is asking for years worth of back rent, even though the owner has said there is no formal lease agreement.

Several times, Levin even tried to sell the boat on the online auction site eBay, with a list price of $550,000, but no takers.

The connections between the old and the new are fading fast as it comes to river vessels. Diesel engines have long since surpassed steamships, but there are a few remaining.

In Vicksburg, there’s long been talk about creating a transportation museum in the Levee Street Depot near the floodwall murals at City Front.

The obituary has yet to be written for the Becky Thatcher, but she is on life support. She is one of the last of a dying few true river steamships.

A few remain, though. Maybe one of those treasures will find its way to our new transportation museum — if it gets done — and be near the boat that replaced her.