Mary Woods No. 2: Parks officials put beaten boat up for sale

The Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism is offering the remains of the battered Mary Woods No. 2 paddle boat for sale, although Jacksonport State Park Superintendent Mark Ballard said Thursday that he plans to keep a few pieces for future display.
The Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism is offering the remains of the battered Mary Woods No. 2 paddle boat for sale, although Jacksonport State Park Superintendent Mark Ballard said Thursday that he plans to keep a few pieces for future display.

— The Mary Woods No. 2 survived a 1984 sinking.

A March 1997 tornado couldn’t destroy it.

Flood waters and heavy snow in 2010 again partially sank the restored boat.

But now the cost to fix the 80-year-old wooden paddle boat that’s parked along the White River at Jacksonport State Park has it facing the scrap yard.

Officials with the Arkansas Parks and Tourism Department are hoping a private buyer will step forward to save the battered boat, which has been an attraction at the park since 1967.

State parks officials plan to advertise the Mary Woods No. 2 for sale in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and in the Newport Daily Independent for four weeks before opening sealed bids for it May 12 in Little Rock.

Officials said they’d toss in for free the metal walkway that leads from the shore to the boat.

State Parks Director Greg Butts said he hopes the boat’s sale will help fund construction of a new visitors center at Jacksonport State Park.

“We want to tell the history of Jacksonport,” he said. “I think we’ve landed on the best solution.”

The boat first sank in 1984, when a 3-inch waterline that carried river water to the boat’s cooling system froze and then burst, flooding its compartments. A St. Louis diving team took three days to pump the water out and refloat the vessel. Officials paid the crew $5,500.

It cost $215,000 to repair the Mary Woods No. 2 after a March 1, 1997, tornado ripped through Jackson County with 200-mph winds and struck the boat, tossing its pilot house onto the shore, said Jacksonport State Park Superintendent Mark Ballard.

Then on Jan. 31, 2010, 7 inches of rain fell, followed by a heavy snow, leaving the 157-ton boat low in the water. Water poured in through a rusted inlet pipe, causing the boat to list, submerged in the White River channel.

A Missouri salvage crew tried to raise the boat but the boat’s wooden superstructure collapsed. Now all that remains is the steel hull, the paddle wheel, the engine, smokestacks and paddle wheel gears.

When word arrived that it would cost $1.7 million to $3 million to again restore the Mary Woods No. 2, state parks officials decided to scrap it.

“It was a tragic thing that happened,” Butts said. “But the cost to bring it back is very high. We have to move forward.”

Then, someone expressed an interest in buying the battered boat, prompting parks officials to give the Mary Woods No. 2 a reprieve.

Ballard said the boat survived the floods of 1982 and 2008, and became a symbol of the town’s resilience and strong spirit.

“I hate to see it go,” he said. “For it to leave a community where it’s been a symbol of our history is sad.”

He said that despite the sale, the park would keep the pilot’s steering wheel, metal windows and doors from the boat for future display.

The original Mary Woods boat, which carried lumber on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, was named after the daughter of lumber company owner Eugene Woods. That boat was destroyed by fire.

The Mary Woods No. 2, built in 1931 for $75,000, hauled lumber in a loop from about 100 miles south of Clarendon to 160 miles north of the Monroe County town on the Cache and White rivers.

The boat had a hull made of 16 steel compartments, built on the same principal as the RMS Titanic, Butts said.

Woods first used the Mary Woods No. 2 along the Mississippi River but moved it when he bought the White River Lumber Co. in the mid-1930s.

In 1960, Woods sold his Clarendon operation and the Mary Woods No. 2 to another lumber company, which seven years later decided to donate the boat to the Arkansas State Parks system if the boat could be moored at Jacksonport.

Parks officials opened the boat as a museum in 1976 after several years on display, and it was featured in a 1979PBS documentary about Mark Twain.

Steve Carpenter, a restaurant owner in Batesville, is trying to form a group of people to buy the boat and haul it up the White River to Batesville for display at the city’s river park.

“It’s the last of its kind. If they sell it for scrap, once they cut it up it’s gone,” Carpenter said.

“It needs to be saved,” he said.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/08/2011

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