Mary Woods No. 2

The Mary Woods No. 2 was a sternwheel towboat that plied the Mississippi, White, and Cache rivers before being donated to Arkansas State Parks in 1967. The vessel survived a sinking and a direct hit by a tornado but was sold after damage from a second sinking precluded its restoration.

Eugene Woods, owner of the Woods Lumber Company, had the Mary Woods No. 2, which was named for his daughter, built in 1931. The Nashville Bridge Company of Nashville, Tennessee, constructed the steel hull, which contained sixteen compartments, and the boat was finished out in Memphis, Tennessee. The $75,000 towboat weighed 149 tons, was 111 feet long, and measured twenty-six feet wide with a 4.4-foot draft.

The Mary Woods No. 2 was originally powered by a pair of steam boilers taken from the towboat Frank E. Woods that provided three hundred horsepower. In 1937, the fuel changed from coal to “Bunker C fuel” that the boat’s captain described as oil “with everything taken out that could be used for something else.” The vessel switched to twin Caterpillar diesel engines in 1949, a conversion that cost $125,000.

The towboat pushed log barges—capable of carrying 85,000 board feet of logs—on the Mississippi River to Woods’s milling operation in Memphis for a couple of years until Woods purchased the White River Lumber Company at Clarendon (Monroe County). The Mary Woods No. 2 then traveled up and down the White and Cache rivers hauling wood to that plant.

With the exception of a few years in which the Mary Woods No. 2 operated out of Greeneville, Mississippi, Clarendon was its home base. Woods sold the Clarendon plant assets, including the towboat, to Potlatch Forests Inc. in 1960, and the boat served that firm for seven years until a new vessel was built. Potlatch then donated the towboat to the Arkansas Publicity and Parks Commission (now the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism).

After a three-day journey up the White River, the Mary Woods No. 2 reached its permanent home at Jacksonport State Park in Jackson County. In 1969, largely through the efforts of the Jackson County Historical Society, the vessel’s appearance was changed with the addition of “ornate trimwork” to its twin smokestacks and balconies to make the working ship resemble a nineteenth-century riverboat. It was opened as a floating museum in 1976. Three years later, the boat was used in a PBS movie, Mark Twain: Beneath the Laughter, with its named changed to Paul Jones during filming.

On January 3, 1984, a three-inch waterline that carried river water to the boat’s cooling system froze and then broke, causing the vessel to settle to the bottom of its twelve-foot channel at the park. A St. Louis, Missouri, diving crew pumped the water from the Mary Woods No. 2 and refloated it at a cost of $5,500.

The boat was seriously damaged during the March 1, 1997, tornado outbreak, during which an F4 twister pushed it 100 yards up the channel while knocking down its smokestacks and hurling most of the pilot house into the river. Arkansas State Parks decided to return the vessel to its original condition, and it was restored at a cost of $215,000 and reopened to the public by 2002.

On January 31, 2010, seven inches of rain fell on Jacksonport State Park, followed by a heavy snow, which forced the Mary Woods No. 2 low in the water. A rusted pipe allowed water to rush into the vessel, which once again sank to the bottom of its channel. When a salvage operation tried to raise it, the entire wood superstructure collapsed, leaving only the steel hull.

After receiving estimates of between $1.7 million and $3 million to restore the Mary Woods No. 2, state officials decided to sell the remnants of the towboat. A group called “Save the Mary Woods No. 2” purchased the hull for $8,500 in May 2011 with the intent of restoring it as an attraction in Batesville (Independence County). After that, its status is unclear.

For additional information:
“Group Buys Sunken Steamboat Hull.” Baxter Bulletin, May 11, 2011, p. 19.

“History of the Mary Woods No. 2.” Jacksonport State Park. https://jacksonhistory.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Mary-Woods-Final-2-13-02.pdf (accessed November 21, 2023).

Bainbridge, Juanita McDoniel [sic]. “The Last Sternwheeler.” Stream of History 33 (Spring 1996): 2–7.

Evans, Roy. “The Mary Woods II No ‘Fair Weather’ Friend.” Stream of History 21 (March 1984): 2–3.

Heard, Kenneth. “Mary Woods No. 2: Park Officials Put Beaten Boat up for Sale.” Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 8, 2011. https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2011/apr/08/mary-woods-no-2-parks-officials-put-beate-20110408/ (accessed November 21, 2023).

Way, Frederick, comp., with Joseph W. Rutter. Way’s Steam Towboat Directory. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1990.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System