In a Susquehanna River log drive, tens of thousands of logs floated downstream like a freight train on water, and without some means of diverting them to riverside millyards, they would have surged out to the Chesapeake Bay. Williamsport, settled along a long, flat stretch of the river at a wide bend that naturally pushed logs to one side, became an ideal stopping point. In 1850, the Susquehanna Boom Company began constructing a log boom that ultimately consisted of more than 400 artificial islands down the center of the river to corral logs floating downstream. The seven-mile boom could hold 300 million board feet of logs at a time, enough to build 30,000 houses. The Susquehanna Boom quickly transformed Williamsport into the Lumber Capital of the World. More than a hundred men worked the boom during peak season, sorting the logs, each branded for a particular Williamsport mill, into holding pens. Between 1862 and 1898, the Susquehanna Boom corralled some 40 million logs, and new sawmills sprang up until more than twenty mills relied on the boom for their log supply. By the late 1800s, railroads began to replace river drives for log transport. Heavy flooding in 1889 and 1894 badly damaged the boom, and in 1909 the Susquehanna Boom corralled its last log. Though little remained of the boom that built Williamsport's fortunes, some log cribs that secured the boom in the river channel could still be seen.