The mission of the Yukon River Survey is to locate and document historic Yukon River shipwrecks and hulks. It is the first Canadian INA project with participants from both the US and Canada.

Work began in 2005 when John Pollack and Robyn Woodward visited a derelict group of fragile Gold Rush era sternwheelers lying between Whitehorse and Carmacks. In 2006, Pollack returned to locate even more abandoned or wrecked vessels at Carcross and Dawson City. Their research has shown the majority of these wrecks are undocumented archaeological sites, whose amazingly intact remains are benchmarks of early steamboat architecture and transportation history. Many of the vessels lie in the forests along the shore where they were winched nearly a century ago to avoid winter ice jams.

Canada's Yukon Territories contains more accessible early sternwheelers than anywhere else in North America. Approximately 290 sternwheelers once plied the Yukon river, of which 110 +/- were built in 1898 in response to the Klondike Gold Rush. Unlike broken fragments found in the Mississippi or Columbia River systems, the Yukon's steamer wrecks are intact to the point you can walk their decks, swing their tillers, and watch the rudders turn.

The Yukon fleet is a unique opportunity to document for the first time how Canadian sternwheelers were assembled, and how construction techniques differ from the rest of North America. At West Dawson seven large sternwheelers lie in closely-packed lines on shore. These vessels display complete hulls, some engines, banks of boilers, various intact tiller-and-rudder systems, hogposts and kingposts. It is completely undocumented.

In 2007 we confirmed the construction of the West Dawson vessels differ markedly from each other. This site contains several older, antiquated designs from the yards of California, Washington, and Alaska, for which no other examples exist in North America. This unexpected discovery suggests some of the technology found in these wrecks dates to the Civil War era.

The Yukon River Survey will document many intact sternwheelers, and expand our knowledge of how this type of vessel was constructed. Annual summer campaigns will continue in 2008 and 2009.