History
Discovery III came into being in 1987 as a result of increased tour traffic to the Riverboat Discovery. Due to increased passenger numbers, the company frequently had to turn away potential guests due to the limited capacity of Discovery II, their primary tour boat. As a result, in 1986 Captain Jim Binkley and his three sons began planning for the construction of a third sternwheeler for the company, which would be named Discovery III.
Plans for Discovery III were finalized by the fall of 1986, and the Binkley family hired the Nichols Brothers Boat Builders, Inc. to build the superstructure of the boat's hulls and decks. Construction began in the late fall of 1986 at the Nichols Brothers shipyard in Whidbey Island, Washington.
Construction of Discovery III was completed 8 months later, in early May 1987. The boat was christened May 9, 1987, in Langley, Washington, and afterward was taken by barge north to the mouth of the Yukon River at St. Marys, Alaska. [1]
Once in St. Marys, the barge was sunk from underneath Discovery III and she began the trip up the Yukon River to Fairbanks, Alaska. In order to make the journey as quickly as possible, Discovery III was driven up the river almost non-stop, with only occasional landings at villages for fuel and brief tours of the vessel by village residents. After a nine-day journey over 1,000 miles up the Yukon River drainage, the Discovery III arrived in Fairbanks on July 3, 1987. She was put into passenger service the following day, on July 4. [2]
Since 1987, Discovery III has been the primary tour vessel operated by the Riverboat Discovery. She makes twice-daily trips throughout the summer from mid-May to mid-September on the Chena and Tanana Rivers.
Fairbanks is a home rule city and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska.
Nenana (Lower Tanana: Toghotili; is a home rule city in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area of the Unorganized Borough in the Interior of the U.S. state of Alaska. Nenana developed as a Lower Tanana community at the confluence where the tributary Nenana River enters the Tanana. The population was 378 at the 2010 census, down from 402 in 2000.
The Chena River is a 100-mile (160 km) tributary of the Tanana River in the Interior region of the U.S. state of Alaska. It flows generally west from the White Mountains to the Tanana River near the city of Fairbanks, which is built on both sides of the river. The Tanana empties into the 2,300-mile (3,700 km) long Yukon River.
The Alaska Railroad is a Class II railroad that operates freight and passenger trains in the state of Alaska. The railroad's mainline is over 470 miles (760 km) long and runs between Seward on the southern coast and Fairbanks, near the center of the state and the Arctic Circle, passing through Anchorage and Denali National Park where 17% of visitors arrive by train. The railroad has about 656 miles (1,056 km) of track, including sidings, rail yards and branch lines, including the branch to Whittier, where the railroad interchanges freight railcars with the contiguous United States via rail barges that sail between the Port of Whittier and Harbor Island in Seattle.
Chena was a former city in interior Alaska, located in the Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska, United States, near the confluence of the Chena and Tanana rivers. It incorporated in 1903 and was disincorporated in 1973. The area is now part of the outskirts of Fairbanks, within the CDP of Chena Ridge. Its heyday was in the first two decades of the 20th century, with a peak population of about 400 in 1907. By 1910 the population had fallen to 138.
John Emerson "Johne" Binkley is a riverboat pilot, businessman and Republican politician from the U.S. state of Alaska. Binkley served for one term apiece in the Alaska House of Representatives and the Alaska Senate during the mid and late 1980s, but is perhaps better known for his candidacy for governor of Alaska in the 2006 primary election. In that election, he finished far behind Sarah Palin, but also far ahead of one-term incumbent governor Frank Murkowski, by then deeply unpopular amongst Alaskans.
The Riverboat Discovery is a tour company in Fairbanks, Alaska, which operates sternwheel riverboats on the Chena and Tanana rivers.
The Discovery I is the smallest of three stern-wheel riverboats operated by the Riverboat Discovery in Fairbanks, Alaska. Built in 1955, the Discovery I is a tour vessel on the Chena and Tanana rivers.
Discovery II, built in 1971, is the second of three Discovery sternwheel riverboats operated by the Riverboat Discovery company. Discovery II is still in use as a tour vessel on the Chena and Tanana rivers near Fairbanks, Alaska.
SS Nenana is a five-deck, western river, sternwheel paddleship. Two-hundred and thirty-seven feet in overall length, with a 42-foot beam, she was rated at 1,000 gross tons register. Nenana was built at Nenana, Alaska, and launched in May 1933. Marine architect W.C. Nickum of Seattle designed the sternwheeler, which was prefabricated in Seattle and put together at Nenana, Alaska, by Berg Shipbuilding Company. Nenana was built to serve as a packet. She could carry both passengers and freight. Nenana had accommodations for 48 passengers on her saloon deck. Up to 300 tons of freight, including two tons in cold storage, could be carried on her main deck. A Texas, topped by a pilothouse mounted forward in poolboat style, provided staterooms for a portion of the crew of 32. Nenana could push five or six barges on the Yukon River; but, because of sharp bends, only one on the Tanana River.
Steamboats on the Yukon River played a role in the development of Alaska and Yukon. Access to the interior of Alaska and Yukon was hindered by large mountains and distance, but the wide Yukon River provided a feasible route. The first steamers on the lower Yukon River were work boats for the Collins Overland Telegraph in 1866 or 1867, with a small steamer called Wilder. The mouth of the Yukon River is far to the west at St. Michael and a journey from Seattle or San Francisco covered some 4,000 miles (6,400 km).
The 2008 Tanana Valley flood or the 2008 Fairbanks flood was a flood in late July and early August 2008 that affected several rivers in the central portion of the American state of Alaska. The city of Fairbanks, Alaska saw high water levels, while the towns of Nenana, Salcha, and Old Minto received heavy damage. The Salcha River and Tanana River reached their second-highest levels since record-keeping began, while the Chena River, which bisects Fairbanks, was kept below flood stage by the use of the Chena River Lakes Flood Control Project.
The Fairbanks Gold Rush was a gold rush that took place in Fairbanks, Alaska in the early 1900s. Fairbanks was a city largely built on gold rush fervor at the turn of the 20th century. Discovery and exploration continue to thrive in and around modern-day Fairbanks.
Elbridge Truman Barnette was a Yukon riverboat captain, banker, and swindler, who founded the city of Fairbanks, Alaska and later served as its first mayor.
The 2009 Alaska floods were a series of natural disasters taking place in the United States state of Alaska during April and May 2009. The floods were a result of heavier-than-normal winter snowfall and above-average spring temperatures that resulted in rapid melting of the winter snowfall. The resulting high water levels were magnified in places by the development of ice dams which caused catastrophic flooding. The record-breaking flood that affected Eagle, Alaska in early May is the best example of an ice dam causing flooding beyond the norm.
The history of Fairbanks, the second-largest city in Alaska, can be traced to the founding of a trading post by E.T. Barnette on the south bank of the Chena River on August 26, 1901. The area had seen human occupation since at least the last ice age, but a permanent settlement was not established at the site of Fairbanks until the start of the 20th century.
Since the early 1980s, several non-steam-powered sternwheel riverboats have been built and operated on major waterways in the U.S. state of Oregon, primarily the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, as river cruise ships used for tourism. Although configured as sternwheelers, they are not paddle steamers, but rather are motor vessels that are only replicas of paddle steamers. They are powered instead by diesel engines. The Lurdine was, when launched in 1983, "the first passenger-carrying sternwheeler in decades to [operate] on the Columbia River". In the case of the 1983-built M.V. Columbia Gorge, the construction and operation of a tourist sternwheeler was led by local government officials who viewed the idea as potentially being a major tourist attraction, giving an economic boost to their area, Cascade Locks, Oregon.
Portus B. Weare was a wooden sternwheel steamship built in 1892 for service on the Yukon River. She played a notable role in the Klondike gold rush, being the second ship to bring news of the Klondike gold strike and an estimated $1 million in gold down the river in 1897. This set off the gold rush. The vessel carried freight and passengers up the Yukon to Dawson City and later Fairbanks. She was abandoned in 1926 or 1927, after the need for steamboat transport to the interior declined.
The Yukon 800 Marathon, also known as the Yukon 800 Mile Marathon or simply the Yukon 800, is an annual speedboat race held in June. The race is run from Fairbanks, Alaska to Galena, Alaska and back, on the Chena, Tanana, and Yukon rivers.
Robert Edwards Sheldon Jr., commonly known variously as Bobby Sheldon, Bobbie Sheldon and R. E. Sheldon, was an American automobile enthusiast, businessman, government official and politician. As a boy, Sheldon accompanied his father to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush and remained there the rest of his life. He built the first automobile in Alaska, was the first to drive an automobile from Fairbanks to Valdez, and championed the construction of roads in Alaska as the state road commissioner. Sheldon served in two sessions of the Alaska Territorial Legislature and two terms in the Alaska State Legislature. He was variously a power company engineer, the postmaster for Fairbanks, the general manager for the Mt. McKinley Tourist & Transportation Company, and the executive director of the Unemployment Compensation Commission of Alaska.
