Steamboats of The Upper Columbia and Kootenay Rivers - Last Steamboat Runs On The Upper Columbia River

Last Steamboat Runs On The Upper Columbia River

Nowitka made the last steamboat run on the upper Columbia in May 1920, when under Captain Armstrong she pushed a pile-driver to build a bridge at Brisco NW of Invermere, which when complete was too low to allow a steamboat to pass under it. Armstrong himself had found employment with the Dominion government on his return from the war. He was seriously injured in an accident in Nelson, BC and died in a hospital in Vancouver, BC in January 1923. His own life had spanned the entire history of steam navigation in the Rocky Mountain Trench from 1886 to 1920. In 1948, Captain John Blakely built a sternwheeler of his own, the Radium Queen, which had to be small to fit under the Brisco bridge.

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