Steamboat Wood

Steamboat Wood. Early Steamboats Relied on Wood for Fuel. , At the turn of the century the news of the Klondike Gold Rush brought thousands to Alaska to seek their fortune. Because there were no roads and a vast river system, sternwheel riverboats were the best way to haul the prospectors and their supplies and open up Alaska., These early riverboats used wood to fire the boilers producing steam to drive the sternwheel. The abundant spruce trees made them the wood of choice. It was cut into four foot lengths with cross cut saws, split to dry using steel wedges and a sledge hammer, and stacked on th[e] riverbank, all by hand. A cord of wood measures 4'x4'x8'. Working hard upstream, a steamboat the size of Discovery III could burn one cord of wood an hour., In its heyday in the early 1900's, there were over 250 steamboats in Alaska and the Yukon, all of them burning hundreds of cords of wood each summer. Woodcutters set up camps along the rivers and this became an industry in itself which made winter jobs for many Alaska Natives., Because of our long summer daylight, the riverboats would usually run around the clock and stop at their wood camps about every 80-100 miles to "wood-up" or re-fuel. This was the job of the deckhands and was done as fast as possible to keep up their busy schedule in our short four month operating season., A good deckhand could haul one quarter of a cord balanced on a hand truck like you see demonstrated here [see top right photo]. Heavy ramps called double-enders were laid on the ground to form a walkway for the hand trucks. The gang plank leading to the bow of the boat sometimes had a very steep drop. A skilled deckhand would skid the steel wheel of the hand truck along the side board of the gang plank to slow the heavy load. It wasn't uncommon to see a deckhand loose their load and end up in the water!, The steamboat era slowly died away with the coming of the Alaska railroad. By the mid 1940's most remaining riverboats had converted to diesel power and the woodcutting industry died away along with it., [Top right photo caption reads] , Deckhands use a hand truck to load wood down the gang plank, [Bottom left photo caption reads] , Steamboats "woods-up" at Tanana, Alaska