Oregon Man's Replicas Trace Evolution Of Classic Riverboat

DALLAS, Ore. - Roger Fletcher is immersed in the history of the McKenzie River drift boat.

Fletcher has spent hundreds of hours researching river boats over the past two years and he's spent hundreds of additional hours in his wood shop crafting scale replicas of watercraft used by pioneering Oregon river men.

The result is a set of four finely crafted miniatures that illustrate the evolution of the boat that made the McKenzie famous.

Indeed, the "backwards" rowboat with the rocking-chair bottom has given the McKenzie name a prominent berth in national angling lore. McKenzie look-alikes can be found nearly anywhere rivers are too deep and fast for fishermen to wade.

The boat is also called the "Rapid Robert" - a name Fletcher says a national magazine attached to a version of the McKenzie boat that was popular in the 1930s and 1940s.

Plans for the Rapid Robert, built by early Eugene cabinet maker and boat-builder Torkel "Tom" Kaarhus, were included in an article published nearly 40 years ago by Popular Mechanics magazine.

The Kaarhus boat was a "square ender" with a wide, flaring stern. The boatman kept the pointed bow faced upstream as he controlled the boat by rowing against the current.

In rough water, the oarsman would turn the boat to an angle so that a corner of the stern would hit the curl of the waves first.

The banana-shaped bottom that is characteristic of McKenzie drift boats allowed the craft to pirouette on the water.

While the Kaarhus design is considered by many to be the "original McKenzie Riverboat," Fletcher says the evidence "suggests that the Rapid Robert had one or more predecessors that entered the McKenzie River scene before Kaarhus became an active boat builder."

He says his research indicates the first boats used by early area fishermen were of a design that migrated west with the timber industry. "They were long scows, almost like an Arkansas White River john boat."

Fletcher believes a riverboat constructed of thin planks and battens was the first attempt to create a lighter, shallow-draft boat that would be more maneuverable than the scows.

The model he constructed is based on a boat built about 1925 by preacher and guide Veltie Pruitt.

The boat, which had a high, square stern to minimize white-water splash and was made of quarter-inch fir planks over white cedar ribs. The joints were caulked with tar or pitch and covered with 2-inch battens.

The replica of the Pruitt boat was the most difficult to make, Fletcher said. The plans had to be developed from old photos in the collection of Veltie's son, Leroy Pruitt, and "from Leroy's recollections of the boat."

Fletcher said Pruitt told him that early-day fishing guide Prince Helfrich hailed his father down to inquire about the boat and, after getting a chance to row it himself, asked Veltie Pruitt to build one like it for him. The men became fast friends and wound up becoming the first to run the upper Rogue, Deschutes and John Day rivers - all in Veltie-built boats.

As chance would have it, it was Prince Helfrich who built the boat from which Fletcher took the measurements for the third historical model in the series.

It is a "double ender," a design created by Woodie Hindman, a second major force in the evolution of the riverboat.

Hindman reportedly came up with the design after getting his "square ender" turned around in some heavy water while on a Salmon River trip with Helfrich in 1939. Rather than risk pivoting the square ender back into the downstream position, the story goes, Hindman spun around in his seat and took the boat through the rapids bow first. Impressed with the way the bow cut through the waves, Hindman began deliberately taking the boat through the rapids bow first.

The next year he built his first boat with two pointed ends.

"My assessment of the plans for the shorter 13-foot Rapid Robert and the double ender suggest that Woodie essentially removed the square end from the Rapid Robert and extended the natural lines of that boat to a higher, flared, pointed stern," Fletcher said.

The "double ender" grew rapidly in popularity during the 1940s.

While the boat was a "dancing wonder," Fletcher says, its interior space was limited and some guides wanted a more sophisticated anchor system.

Another story has it that a guide wanted to be able to attach a small outboard motor to help speed passage through long stretches of slack water.

In any event, Hindman eventually began replacing the upstream pointed bow with a small transom.

And that completed the evolution of the modern McKenzie River drift boat - a craft that, with its transom bow that looks like a stern and a pointed stern that looks like a bow, appears "backwards" to the uninitiated.

The double ender with transom was essentially the template for the modern McKenzie Riverboat, Fletcher said.

The historic representations built by Fletcher for the most part use the same types of wood utilized by the original boat builders - with the exception that he chose African mahogany to represent marine plywood. They are built at a scale of one inch to the foot.

The Dallas woodworker, who retired from the Oregon State University Extension Service, is offering to build and sell a limited number of the historical replicas, at prices starting at $430 each.

Among the potential customers is the Bureau of Land Management, which has expressed an interest in obtaining a complete set to display at a new Rogue River visitor's center. Details are available on Fletcher's Internet site: www.riverstouch.com