At The Point, the North River and South River meet to form the South Fork of the Shenandoah River, and in the early 1800s, when water levels were favorable, flotillas of flat-bottomed boats called gundalows departed downstream for Harpers Ferry. At a captain’s signal, eight-foot tin horns sounded departure, and each boat was usually worked by four pole-men and one man each at the front and rear rudders. At Harpers Ferry, the boats were dismantled and their lumber used for buildings, while the boatmen, paid as much as $18 for the two- or three-day trip, returned home on foot. Gundalows were built on both sides of the river here, and a typical one, about 60 feet long and 9½ feet wide, could cost from as little as $6 to as much as $600. Goods including wooden scantling, whiskey, tanned leather, grains, pig iron, copper, manganese, and even herds of turkeys were brought in by wagon and stockpiled here for shipment. During the Civil War, when bridges and roads were sometimes impassable, river traffic continued to carry badly needed goods to Confederates downstream. In late spring 1864, Union general David Hunter’s forces destroyed most of Port Republic’s industry, a major factor in the decline of river traffic that had flourished for most of the century, and the last gundalow departed in 1878. Evidence of former bridges and an old dam can still be seen near North River, and at South River the site of the lower ford and the bed of one of two millraces that paralleled the river remain visible.