Navigation Improvements
The upper Columbia was choked with snags, which were sunken logs jammed in the river bottom and sticking into the river. These could be significant barriers to navigation, as shown by the 23 days it took Clive to travel the 100 miles (160 km) up to Windermere Lake. A significant reason for this delay were the numerous snags in the river. Snag removal was done by a specialized vessel called a "snag boat" which was equipped with a large hoist and powerful winches to pull the snags out of the river. ( Samson V at New Westminster, BC and W.T. Preston, at Anacortes, Washington, are two excellent existing examples of Pacific Northwest sternwheel snagboats.) In 1892, the Dominion government put a snag boat, the Muskrat o the upper river, which must have significantly improved river transportation.
Another barrier to navigation on the upper Columbia was the numerous sandbars that were used by spawning salmon. A clam shell dredge was employed to deepen the sandbars by digging out the river bottom. This would have had the adverse side effect of damaging the salmon spawning grounds.
Read more about this topic: Steamboats Of The Upper Columbia And Kootenay Rivers
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“I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)