Ukiah, a wooden-hulled, double-ended ferryboat, was built in 1890 by the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad Company at their Tiburon shipyard.

Numerous contemporaneous newspaper reports, however, state that both the passenger accommodations and railroad cars were located on the main deck.

[5] Two standard-gauge railway tracks, on which the railroad cars were transported, were installed the length of the main deck through the center of the ship.

The passenger decorations on each side differed, with the men's featuring grained panelling, and the women's, "parti colors, with gilt moldings and beadings".

[5] Ukiah was powered by a single-cylinder 1,700 horsepower (1,300 kW) vertical beam steam engine with a bore of 65 inches (170 cm) and stroke of 12 feet (3.7 m), built by the Fulton Iron Works of San Francisco.

[6] The ship originally carried people between San Francisco and Tiburon during the day and hauled railroad freight cars at night.

On April 16, 1907, she sank at the foot of East Street, San Francisco due to errors in handling the off loading of railroad cars.

Since there were no bridges on San Francisco Bay at the time, Ukiah was able to meet this demand via a refitted lower deck designed to handle vehicles.

During this period the upper deck included seating areas, a magazine stand, and a restaurant that served full meals.

During the war years, Eureka joined a number of bay ferries in the work of transporting troops from Camp Stoneman in Pittsburg, California, up the Sacramento River, to the port of embarkation piers in San Francisco.

[clarification needed] By the 1950s Eureka served by linking Southern Pacific's cross-country trains, which terminated at Oakland, with San Francisco until 1957, when she snapped an engine crank pin.

A significant portion of that restoration was the replacement of the boat's "kingposts"—four large wooden structures that support the paddlewheels and upper decks.