John Fitch (inventor)
The first successful trial run of his steamboat "Perseverance" was made on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787, in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention. It was propelled by a bank of oars on either side of the boat. During the next few years, Fitch and Voigt worked to develop better designs, and in June 1790 launched a boat powered by a steam engine driving several stern-mounted oars. These oars paddled in a manner similar to the motion of a swimming duck's feet. With this boat, he carried up to 30 paying passengers on numerous round-trip voyages between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey during the summer of 1790. Estimates of miles traveled that summer range from 1,300 to 3,000, and Fitch claimed that the boat often went for 500 miles without mechanical problems. Estimated speeds were of a minimum 6 miles per hour under unfavorable conditions, to a maximum of 7 or 8 miles per hour.
Fitch was granted a U.S. patent on August 26, 1791, after a battle with James Rumsey, who had also invented a steam-powered boat. The newly created federal Patent Commission did not award the broad monopoly patent that Fitch had asked for, but rather a patent of the modern kind, for the new design of Fitch's steamboat. It also awarded steam-engine-related patents dated that same day to Rumsey, Nathan Read, and John Stevens. The loss of a monopoly due to these same-day patent awards led many of Fitch's investors to leave his company. While his boats were mechanically successful, Fitch no longer had the financial resources to carry on.
Steamboats of the Arrow Lakes
The first steamboat on the route was the "Forty-Nine", built to service a brief gold rush on the Big Bend of the Columbia River, attempting the run from Marcus, Washington Terr., just above Kettle Falls, to the La Porte, one of the main boomtowns of the rush, which was site at the foot of the infamous and also impassable Dalles des Morts or Death Rapids, which were at the head of river navigation but also just below the richest of the Big Bend's goldfields, on the Goldstream River which meets the Columbia just upstream. Another major goldfield, Downie Creek, joined the Columbia just below the rapids and was the site of the boomtown Downie Creek, British Columbia, another port-of-call on the run. When the gold rush ended, "Forty-Nine" was withdrawn for lack of clientele, and the captain gave free passage out of the Big Bend area for those who could not afford passage. After that, the small steam launch "Alpha" ran supplies up to Revelstoke (then called Farwell) where the Canadian Pacific Railway was building a crossing over the Columbia River for its transcontinental line. In 1885, a much larger vessel, the sternwheeler "Kootenai", was built at the Little Dalles at Northport, Washington Terr., for the CPR, but grounded in September of that year, and was laid up for a number of years afterwards. After that, three businessmen formed the Columbia Transportation Company, and put "Dispatch" on the Arrow Lakes route. The "Dispatch" (sometimes spelled ""Despatch"") was a clunky-looking catamaran, which first ran on August 9, 1888. Her owners made enough money from her operations to buy the "Marion", which had been operating above the Big Bend. She was shipped over and launched at Revelstoke.
The owners of the Columbia Transportation Company brought in some bigger businessmen, J.A. Mara, Frank S. Barnard, and Captain John Irving, who formed the Columbia River and Kootenay Steam Navigation Company on January 21, 1890, with a capital of $100,000. In 1889 through 1890, the new firm purchased the idle "Kootenai" for $10,000 and built and launched the "Lytton" at Revelstoke, which was ready for service in July, 1890. The first trip taken by the "Lytton" on July 2, 1890, was transporting rails and other track-building supplies south through the Arrow Lakes to Sproat's Landing, where the Kootenay River flowed into the Columbia, for a railroad that the CPR was building from the landing to Nelson on Kootenay Lake. The trip was 150 miles each way, and Lytton averaged 12 miles an hour downstream and 11 miles an hour upstream, including stops for wooding up and minor repairs.
By August 1890, American interests had completed a railroad, called the Spokane Falls and Northern, from Spokane Falls (later simply Spokane) to Little Dalles, Washington (Northport). "Lytton", "Kootenai" and the Arrow Lakes route formed a link between the northern CPR railhead at Revelstoke the Arrow Lake to the southern railhead at Little Dalles.