The Transport of Timber and Charcoal on the Upper Course of the River Drava/Drau

Up to the completion of the Southern Railway Track (Südbahnstrecke) in 1871 the river Drava had a very great economic importance for Carinthia, and this for the inland trade as well as for the export to the neighboring foreign countries downstream. It was the big East-West link-up between Carinthia, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary. In Carinthia itself it was the connection between the well wooded forest areas in the upper reaches with the regions in Lower Carinthia, which had less wood but were developed industrially, and further on with the Pannonian economic sphere. The export of wood, which can be proven already in the 14th century, underwent repeated restrictions at the end of the 18th century, when the forest devotions were abolished. Subsequently however the traffic of rafts and flat-bottomed boats (so called Plätten) flourished, supplying the iron processing enterprises in Lower Carinthia with charcoal, the sawmills in the lower reaches of the river Drava with round timber, and also the ports in the Adria with the much-demanded shipbuilding wood. With the alteration of the river Drava for the production of electricity as well as with the change from transport with rafts to that with the railway the rafting traffic on the river Drava found its end after the Second World War.