This is a typical pushboat, the most common means of moving people and supplies up and down the rivers that used to flow occasionally in the mountains. Now the creeks only run if it rains really hard or if the snow melts fast. Otherwise, almost all of the old rivers have been slowed to shallow, slow-running streams. Pushboats had a draft shallow enough to go places the steamboats couldn't go. A detachment of the 39th was using a number of pushboats to move their new guns and uniforms up the river to Pikeville when they were attacked at Wireman's Shoals in Floyd County on December 4th, 1862 (Alice Lloyd College Photo Archives).