Frank P. Armstrong - Return To The Columbia River

Return To The Columbia River

North Star was sold back to Captain Armstrong when he returned from his Klondike 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. While Armstrong had been engaged in the Kootenay and the Klondike mining booms, a few competitors had appeared on the upper Columbia. In 1899, Harold E. Forster (d.1940) a wealthy mountain climber, businessman, politician and occasional steamboat captain, brought Selkirk by rail from Shuswap Lake to Golden, where he launched her but used her as a yacht and not, at least initially, as commercial vessel. Also, Captain Alexander Blakely bought the little sidewheeler Pert and operated her on the river.

In 1902 Armstrong dismantled Duchess. Armstrong built a new steamer, Ptarmigan, using the engines from Duchess which were by then were over 60 years old.

Read more about this topic:  Frank P. Armstrong

Famous quotes containing the words return to, return, columbia and/or river:

    I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, a plant, an inanimate object, indeed lost to us until the day, which for some never arrives, when we find that we pass near the tree, or come to possess the object which is their prison. Then they quiver, call us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Freed by us, they have vanquished death and return to live with us.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    If a man, notoriously and designedly, insults and affronts you, knock him down; but if he only injures you, your best revenge is to be extremely civil to him in your outward behaviour, though at the same time you counterwork him, and return him the compliment, perhaps with interest.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    The young women, what can they not learn, what can they not achieve, with Columbia University annex thrown open to them? In this great outlook for women’s broader intellectual development I see the great sunburst of the future.
    M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)

    but we wish the river had another shore,
    some further range of delectable mountains,
    Robert Lowell (1917–1977)