Steamboats of The Upper Columbia and Kootenay Rivers - Steam Navigation Ends On Upper Kootenay River

Steam Navigation Ends On Upper Kootenay River

In the summer of 1897 a new competitor for Armstrong, Miller and Wardell arose. With the backing of John D. Farrell, steamboat captain M.L. McCormack on August 16, 1897, incorporated the Kootenai River Transportation Company, and commenced building a new steamer, J.D. Farrell, which was launched on November 8, 1897, and completed over the coming winter. In the meantime, in January 1898, both Armstrong and Wardner sold out their shares in the International Trading Company, and went north to Alaska to participate in the Klondike Gold Rush, with Armstrong deciding to try his chances at making money as a steamboat captain on the Stikine River then being promoted as the "All-Canadian" route to the Yukon River gold fields.

J.D. Farrell, the largest steamboat ever built on either the upper Kootenay or Columbia Rivers, and sporting such frontier luxuries as bathrooms, electric lighting, and steam heat, reached Fort Steele on April 28, 1898, her first trip up the Kootenay. Built to last ten years, this fine steamer was to run for only a single season on the Kootenay. On June 8, 1898, Captain McCormack was taking J.D. Farrell south through Jennings Canyon in "hurricane" strength headwind, which blew her off course into a rock, knocking a hole in the stern. McCormack managed to get the steamer to shallow water before she sank up to the wheelhouse. Her owners were able to raise J.D. Farrell and make a few more trips that season.

By October 1898 enough rail lines were completed along the upper Kootenay to terminate steam navigation as a competitive transportation method. In particular, the completion of Crow's Nest Railway on October 6, 1898, and development of smelters in the Kootenay region, particularly at Trail, BC, near the southern end of the Arrow Lakes, allowed ore to be routed to smelters by rail, completely bypassing Jennings.

The surviving upper Kootenay boats, North Star, J.D. Farrell, and Gwendoline were laid up at Jennings. (Annerly had been dismantled by then.) J.D. Farrell and North Star were tied up for almost three years at Jennings until finding employment supporting construction of a rail line to Fernie, BC. J.D. Farrell was later dismantled, with engines and machinery being reused on another steamer. (This was the general practice.) North Star was sold back to Captain Armstrong when he returned from his Yukon adventure, and on June 4, 1902, he took her north to the Columbia River on his famous dynamite-aided transit of the decrepit Baillie-Grohman canal. With North Star gone, steamboating on the upper Kootenay ended for good.

Of the last three Kootenay boats, Gwendoline's fate was unique. When Armstrong and Wardner left ITC for the north, James D. Miller was in charge of the ITC boats. Striking on the idea of moving Gwendoline to the lower Kootenay River by rail, where she could be run profitably again, or at least so it was hoped. In June 1899 he had the vessel loaded on three flat cars. Disaster then struck when the vessel was shifted to fit around a trackside rock cut. The boat was moved too close to the edge, flipped off the rail cars and landed in a canyon, which the Libby Press described: