Steamboats of The Arrow Lakes - Expansion of The Fleet

Expansion of The Fleet

After the successful 1890 season, the Columbia & Kootenay Steam Navigation Company decided to expand the fleet by adding a new sternwheeler, Columbia (sternwheeler), built at Little Dalles, and launched in 1891, at price of $75,000. She remained under American registry. Once Columbia was in service, C&KSN was able to run two roundtrip boats weekly from Revelstoke to Little Dalles. The critical nature of the Arrow Lakes steamboat route can be judged by the fact that when the steamboats were not running, mail from Revelstoke to Nelson, on Kootenay Lake, took 10 to 14 days, as opposed to the two days during the summer steamboat season.

• Columbia (nearest to riverbank) and Lytton at Revelstoke, 1893

C&KSN also brought up from Oregon one of the best steamboat captains on the Columbia River, James W. Troup, to manage its operations on Arrow and Kootenay lakes. Troup had to deal with a number of challenges, including irregular schedules, and ice and low water blocking operations. At one point, the water level, apparently in the narrows between upper and lower Arrow Lakes, was so low that only the small Dispatch and Marion could make the run between the lakes. Troup built the Illecillewaet at Revelstoke, launched October 30, 1892, and "'designed to float on dew.'" She was small, and apparently ugly, but was a big improvement over dispatch, and could operate in low water when no other boat could.

• Illecillewaet in ice at Robson; Lytton in background pushing barge, 1899

In 1893, a rail extension was built from Arrowhead to a junction with the CPR mainline at Revelstoke. Boats no longer needed to steam up the shallow waters of the Columbia between the north end of Upper Arrow Lake and Revelstoke, and Arrowhead now became the effective northern head of navigation.

Lytton was driven ashore by a storm on July 26, 1896, near Nakusp, and had to be withdrawn from service for emergency repair work at Nakusp. On August 2, 1894, Columbia was destroyed by fire just north of the international border. This took out both of the C&KSN's passenger steamers, leaving only Illecillewaet and Kootenai were moving the freight business, which was mostly related to rail construction. Troup needed a replacement for Columbia right way, so he brought in the Bulger family, experienced steamboat builders from Portland, Oregon, to run the shipyards at Nakusp and at Nelson, and to build Columbia's replacement.

On July 1, 1895, the new sternwheeler, Nakusp, was launched from the shipyard at the city of the same name. This vessel was the largest yet seen on the Arrow Lakes, 1034 tons, almost twice the tonnage of Columbia. She was luxurious in a way other vessels never had been.