While this sounds simple enough, there's more to it than meets the eye. These boats came into existence about 150 years ago, and went out in the 1950's. As the propeller became the preferred means of propulsion, the paddlewheel fell by the wayside. With the rein of the paddlewheel boat being about 100 years, one would assume it wouldn't be too difficult to find all the technical info to build one of these boats. The best place to search for info on anything is the internet,and there is very little. It seems that when they quit building them they threw out all the tech info. The American Sternwheeler Association Has some good information.also the Sternwheel Riverboat Harbor site has lots of good stuff.

At the site, the Sternwheeler Riverboat Harbor, there is a set of plans for a hull 67 feet. That is what I was going to do as soon as I came up with the money. Then there was coming up with the money for the steel to start the project. I was talking to a friend one day about this and he told me he knew where there was an old house boat hull I could buy. I didn't like that idea at first because so many things would have to be changed. It seemed that by the time I made all the changes I might as well start from scratch. And besides it wasn't big enough for what I wanted. As I thought about it more I thought about the reality of it actually happening. I might wait a long time trying to get together enough money to start this project, in fact, it may never happen. If I bought the houseboat hull, at least I would have a start, even if it did take more work to make it what I wanted.

Well, I bought the houseboat hull, 10'x30', pulled it home with my pickup truck. With a couple bottles of oxygen and acetylene I've done extensive surgery to the hull and am now moving forward with the building of a boat. It will be somewhere around 15'x50-55' hull with a 10' diameter by 8' wide wheel