Surviving Vessels
Moyie and Sicamous are the only surviving sternwheelers from before 1915. (No sidewheelers survive.) Neither is operational, and both are kept permanently out of water. They are preserved as museums. These are unique as they are both from the time of passenger carrying steamboats in the Pacific Northwest. Moyie is said to be the oldest surviving vessel of her kind, and this is probably true.
Only one operational sternwheel steamboat survives on the entire Columbia River system, north or south of the border, and that is the Portland, moored at Portland, Oregon. Unlike Sicamous and Moyie, Portland never carried passengers on a regular basis, but was built as a towboat. The steel-built steam tug Jean is also in Portland, but has been stripped of her paddle wheel and is lying in a semi-derelict state in North Portland Harbor (Oregon Slough).
Another boat, W.T. Preston, a Corps of Engineers snagboat, survives as a museum at Anacortes and is reported to be operational. Unlike Portland however, W.T. Preston is not kept in the water. The propeller steamer Virginia V which technically may have been the last wooden steamboat in regular commercial passenger service on the Columbia (in 1942) has been restored and is operational in Seattle, Washington.
Read more about this topic: Steamboats Of The Columbia River
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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