Steamboats of The Upper Columbia and Kootenay Rivers - Rise of Competition On The Kootenay River

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 (19 km) 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.