Wooden wrecks along this shoreline are the remains of once luxurious paddlewheel steamboats that traveled the Apalachicola River from the 1820s to the 1930s. Marine archaeologists documented many of these vessels between the Jim Woodruff Dam and the railroad bridge, and this concentration of 19th-century and early 20th-century boats is one of the largest in the country. Paddlewheel steamers were vital transportation on the Apalachicola River and its tributaries, the Chattahoochee and Flint, using steam power to move along the river system. Chattahoochee became a major port for river traffic, and support structures at what is now River Landing Park included warehouses, a tavern, and a wharf, where passengers and cargo boarded for trips upstream to Columbus on the Chattahoochee and Albany on the Flint and downstream to the seaport of Apalachicola. Many steamboats had short working lives, sometimes only one or two years, sinking after striking snags or suffering steam explosions, while others were tied up and abandoned after modern highways replaced the river as a route of commerce. During the Second Seminole War from 1835 to 1842 and the Civil War, paddlewheel steamboats carried soldiers and vital supplies to and from Chattahoochee's Apalachicola Arsenal, which was served by a special wharf here. The John W. Callahan, Jr., owned by the Callahan line of Bainbridge, was the last commercial paddlewheel steamer to operate regularly on the Apalachicola River, continuing into the 1930s before being tied up and abandoned here. The strong current forced many disabled vessels aground at this site, and archaeologists found three different steamboats, each older than the one above it, piled up in a single spot on the riverbank.