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Anacortes Yacht Charters The Roketman and the Haiku Looking in at the Salon

From 1886 to 1920, steamboats ran on the upper reaches of the Columbia and Kootenay in the Rocky Mountain Trench. The circumstances of the rivers in the area, and the construction of transcontinental railways across the trench from east to west made steamboat navigation possible.

In the early 1880s a wealthy European adventurer, William Adolf Baillie-Grohman (1851-1921), travelled to the Kootenay Region and became obsessed with developing an area far down the Kootenay River near the southern end of Kootenay Lake called Kootenay Flats, near the modern town of Creston, BC. The problem for Baillie-Grohman was that the Kootenay River kept flooding Kootenay Flats. Baillie-Grohman thought the downstream flooding could be lessened by diverting the upstream portion of the Kootenay River into the Columbia River through the Canal Flats. This would have increased the water flow through the Columbia River, particularly near Golden and Donald, where Baillie-Grohman's proposal, if it had been implemented, would have threatened to flood the newly built transcontinental railroad and other areas of the Columbia Valley.

The provincial government refused to allow the diversion. However, Baillie-Grohman was able to obtain ownership of large areas of land in the Kootenay region, provided he engaged in certain forms of economic development, including construction of a shipping canal and a lock. The lock was necessary because the Kootenay River was 11 feet higher than the level of the Columbia Lake.

The Baillie-Grohman canal was used only three times by steam-powered vessels. In 1893, Armstrong built Gwendoline at Hansen's Landing on the Kootenay River, and took the vessel through the canal north to the shipyard at Golden to complete her fitting out. In late May 1894 Armstrong returned the completed Gwendoline back to the Kootenay River, transiting the canal.

The canal remained unused until 1902, Armstrong brought North Star north from the Kootenay to the Columbia. The transit of North Star was only made possible by the destruction of the lock at the canal, thus making it unusable.

The Upper Columbia Navigation and Tramway Company

About five miles north of Columbia Lake the river widened again into another lake. Originally this was called Mud Lake, which may have been an indication of its depth and general condition, but later this was changed to Adela Lake. The five mile stretch between Adela Lake and Columbia Lake was shallow and difficult to navigate even for the very shallow draft steamers that Armstrong was running on the river. Armstrong's solution to the problem was to incorporate the Upper Columbia Navigation and Tramway Company ("UCN&TC"). The company's charter required it to construct two tramways to improve transport. Armstrong served as manager and T.B.H. Cochrane as president.

The Upper Columbia Company built two horse or mule-drawn tramways, one at the start of the route running from the CPR depot at Golden Station to the point two miles south where the Kicking Horse River ran into the Columbia. It was here that the company had located its steamboat dock.

The second tramway was located further upriver. It ran five miles in length, from Adela Lake, BC. south to Columbia Lake. The tramways were like railways except that the cars were horsedrawn, and the carts were much smaller than rail cars. The company had steamers on Columbia Lake and the Kootenay River, but did not use the Grohman Canal, portaging traffic over Canal Flats rather than using the canal, which in fact was only used twice by steamboats during its existence.

With the tramways in place, the 300 mile transportation chain from the rail depot at Golden to Jennings Montana rain as follows. Freight would be taken on the tramway to the steamboat dock at Golden, and loaded on a steamer. The steamer ran upriver to the south end of Windermere Lake. The freight would then be portaged around Mud (or Adlin) Lake, to Columbia Lake. Once at Columbia Lake, the cargo would be loaded again on a steamboat, this time the Pert and run to the south end of Columbia Lake, where it was unloaded again, portaged across Canal Flats and loaded again on another steamer on the Kootenay river, and run down to Jennings, passing through Jennings Canyon.

Steam navigation begins on the upper Kootenay River

Mining activity was increasing in the upper Kootenay valley in the early 1890s. Miners wanted access to the area and needed transport for their supplies. The ore taken out of the mountains had to be hauled out of the area. In the early 1890s there were no railroads near the area, and without transport to a smelter, the mined ore was valueless. The nearest railhead was that of the Great Northern Railway at Jennings, Montana, well over 100 miles away from the major mining strikes at Kimberly and Moyie Lake. Overland transport out of the question. The ore could only be moved was by marine transport on the Kootenay River. With this in mind, Walter Jones and Captain Harry S. DePuy organized the Upper Kootenay Navigation Company ("UKNC") and in the winter of 1891 to 1892, built at Jennings the small sternwheeler Annerly. With the spring breakup of the ice in 1893, DePuy and Jones were able to get Annerly 130 miles upriver to Quick Ranch, about 15 miles south of Fort Steele, BC. Once there, Annerly was able to embark passengers and load 50 tons of ore. Returning to Jennings, Jones and DePuy were able to make enough money to hire veteran James D. Miller (1830-1907), one of the most experienced steamboat men in the Pacific Northwest, to hand Annerly for the rest of the 1893 season.

Rise of competition on the Kootenay River

Armstrong also wished to take advantage of the demand for shipping, so moving south from the Columbia to the Kootenay, he built the small sternwheeler Gwendoline at Hansen's Landing, about 12 miles north of the present town of Wasa. Instead of taking the ore south to Jennings, Armstrong's plan was to move the ore north across Canal Flats and then down the Columbia to the CPR railhead at Golden. As described, Armstrong took Gwendoline through the Baillie-Grohman canal in the fall of 1893 (or rolled her across Canal Flats), fitted her out at Golden, and returned back through the canal in the spring of 1894.

In March 1896, Miller shifted over to run Annerly as an associate of Armstrong's Upper Columbia Navig. & Tramway Co. In 1896, Armstrong and Miller built Ruth at Libby, Montana. Launched April 22, 1896, Ruth at 275 tons was the largest steamer yet to operate on the upper Kootenay River. Ruth, like the second Duchess, was designed and built by a professional shipwright. For Ruth the shipwright Louis Pacquet, of Portland, Oregon. Ruth made the runs downriver to Jennings and the smaller Gwendoline ran upriver with the traffic to Canal Flats and the portage tramway.

The combination of Armstrong, Miller and Wardner, and their construction of Ruth created serious competition for Jones and DePuy of UKNC with their only steamer the barely-adequate Annerly. Large sacks of ore were piling up at Hansen's Landing from the mines, and all needed transport. The competitors reached an agreement to split the traffic on the Kootenay river between them. To earn their share of the revenues from this split, DePuy and Jones built Rustler (125 tons) at Jennings 1896. Rustler reached Hansen's Landing in June 1896 on her run up from Jennings.

Another competitor was Captain Tom Powers, of Tobacco Plain, Montana who traded 15 cayuse horses for the machinery to build a small steamer near Fort Steele, which was called Fool Hen. The machinery was too large for Fool Hen and there was no room for freight. Powers used discarded wooden packing cases from Libby merchants to make his paddlewheel buckets, so that as the steamer churned down the river, the merchants' names rotated again and again as the wheel turned. Shortly after Fool Hen was finished, Powers then removed the engines and placed them in a new steamer, the Libby. This time the engines proved to be too small for the hull, and Libby was used only sporadically in 1894 and 1895.

Jennings Canyon

Once in the United States, the Kootenay river, in its natural state before the construction of the Libby Dam, flowed through Jennings Canyon to the settlement of Jennings, Montana. Jennings has almost completely disappeared as a town, but it was near Libby, Montana. Above Jennings, the Kootenay River narrowed as it ran through Jen

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