The Open River Was Supposed to Pay Dividends. Was Anyone Counting?

One year ago today the Celilo canal was formally opened and the Open River officially proclaimed by a series of celebrations from Lewiston to Astoria. Prominent citizens from all parts of the Inland Empire came to join in the festivities, and with them came men who had put forth years of effort in the halls of Congress to make possible the dream of an open river. The question those men put to the river communities at that time was, “Will you make use of the river? Will the work at Celilo prove an investment or a folly?”

In a large measure this question is still before the river communities, and upon the answer rests the future of waterway development in the Northwest. Campaigns, propagandas and sentiment may start such movements as the open river one, but once in motion they must proceed or decline of their own momentum. The open river is no longer a dream. It is a fact. It has passed from the realm of sentiment and now stands upon a prosaic, matter-of-fact business basis.

Had the Celilo canal been built as a private enterprise it would have been possible at this time to have determined whether or not its first year’s use indicated success or failure as a business investment. Somebody would have known what traffic had passed through it during the year. As it is nobody seems to know. The one steamboat company whose boats have been operating through it seem to have but a hazy idea of what the tonnage has been, so at best Celilo’s first year’s record is but a guess.

Superficial observations, however, are such as to justify the belief that the Open Columbia is being used and that its use is steadily increasing. The two steamers operating regularly between Lewiston and Portland are carrying full cargoes each way every trip, and not infrequently they are forced to refuse freight offerings because of capacity loads.

The year has shown, too, that Kennewick is the banner river freight town on the Columbia this side of Celilo. Although no figures are available to show the tonnage in and out of Kennewick, this city’s average monthly river freight bill last year was $1,200, and each month showed an increase over the preceding month, while the shipments during the last two weeks of March this year were greater than for any month last year.

Not only is Kennewick utilizing the Columbia for transporting products to lower river points or to tide water, but to Puget Sound points. The Church Mfg. Company is shipping its products to Portland by boat and then reshipping by rail to Seattle, laying them down in the Washington metropolis 15 cents per hundred cheaper than it is possible to ship them by rail direct from Kennewick to Seattle. They are shipping direct to San Francisco by water at a rate that is only 3 cents per hundred more than it costs to lay the same products down in Spokane and 5 cents less than the rail rate from Kennewick to Seattle or Portland. Kennewick is receiving its sugar and salt supply direct from San Francisco and laying it down here 20 cents a hundred cheaper than it can be bought in Spokane and at a rate five cents less than it would cost to ship it by rail from Seattle or Portland and only 8 cents a hundred more than the boat rate from Portland. Lumber purchased at mills along the lower Columbia can be shipped up the river by boat and unloaded on the Kennewick wharf at a price $8 per thousand less than it can be purchased in the local yards.

These figures, though significant, do no more than merely hint at the possibilities of river transportation—possibilities which do not seem to be generally appreciated even by the managers of the steamboat company.