Newport to Metaline: The Steamboat Fleet vs. the Stagecoach
When Colville boasted a new tri-weekly stage line, Newport answered with daily steamer service, six Great Northern trains, and a reminder of who really controlled the east end.
Newport the Metaline Gateway
The Colville Examiner man is elated at the establishment of a stage line between his town and Metaline. The stage will make tri-weekly trips, but only runs as far as Cronin's at the present time. Colville expects to get the bulk of the trade from the establishment of the line, although the Examiner admits that some freight may go into the camp by way of the river and Newport.
The Examiner man appears to be hitting a pretty strong pipe. The people in the Metaline district and the inhabitants of the Pend d'Oreille valley are not as sleepy as the county seat crowd. They are not satisfied with a tri-weekly mail service on a stage line. They want their mail daily and they get it via Newport. Their wants are supplied by four steamers at the present time, and three more boats at least will be added to the river fleet this year, one of them having a capacity for carrying 400 passengers.
At the present time one boat is making the down-river trip from this city to Metaline in less than four hours and makes this trip daily. The return trip takes about seven hours. The traveler does not have to depend on one or two dinkey trains to get to Spokane or any other point, as the Great Northern has a half dozen passenger trains running in and out of Newport daily, and the finest passenger trains in the west leave over the Idaho & Washington the same number of times daily.
No, Mr. Examiner, your stage line is a relic of the past. The people of the east end are up-to-date, and Newport will still be the gateway of the Metalines.
It is understood that the stage line is to take the place of the automobile line that was to have been maintained over the same route by the Hot Air Transportation Co.
“No, Mr. Examiner, your stage line is a relic of the past. The people of the east end are up-to-date, and Newport will still be the gateway of the Metalines.”
The fight reads like a rural transit argument: a county seat claims a new route, while a river town argues it already has faster, daily connections. Newport's identity as a gateway was then tied to steamboats and rail; today the same corridor debates how to keep remote communities connected.
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