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.
Pend Oreille River
In the 19th century, logging was the other major industry of the Pend Oreille River area, and attracted hundreds to thousands of men to the region, many of them Scandinavian. Logging was profitable because almost the entire Pend Oreille watershed was forested with various types of trees. However, shipping logs to ports lower on the Columbia River (to the southwest of the Pend Oreille River) was a problem. Not only was the river riddled with frightening waterfalls and rapids, but it flows north, in the opposite direction that the logging companies wanted to move their logs. At about this time, steamboats were introduced to the Pend Oreille River. The first steamboat on the river was "The Bertha", built in 1887 at Albeni Falls. Other well-known craft included "Ione", "Spokane", and "Metaline" ("Pend Oreille"). These boats carried passengers and ore and also towed log rafts up the river. (Since it flows north, they had to tow the logs south, against the current, to ship it a shorter distance to the lumber mills and factories lower in the Columbia Basin.) Navigation on the Pend Oreille presented few problems upstream of the Box Canyon rapids about three-fourths of the way down the Pend Oreille River (today close to the site of Box Canyon Dam). Many boats were wrecked in the stretch between Box Canyon and the river's mouth (including "Metaline", which was the only large steamer to operate on the lower river on a regular basis). After the Idaho & Washington Northern Railroad was built in the area, steamboat commerce faded and the logs were transported by rail. The Idaho & Washington Northern was eventually succeeded by the Milwaukee Road.