Steamboat Men Race the High Water to Open the Upper Columbia
Two veteran river captains came to Kettle Falls to scout a boat line from the Rickey rapids south to Fort Spokane — and meant to have a hull on the water within ten days, before the freshet made the obstructions impassable.
Captain D. A. Griggs, general manager of the Columbia Okanogan Steamboat Co., and Captain Fred McDermott, pioneer open-river agitator, navigator of western, eastern and South American rivers, were at Kettle Falls this week to look over the proposition of putting a line of steamboats on the Columbia river from the Rickey rapids, near Kettle Falls, running as far south as Fort Spokane. They are prepared to have one of their boats on this stretch of river within the next ten days, as they desire to bring the boat over the obstructions before the high water. — Kettle River Journal.
“they desire to bring the boat over the obstructions before the high water.”
For a few years around 1908 the Columbia above Kettle Falls was a working highway, with boats threading the Rickey rapids before the spring freshet. Grand Coulee Dam drowned that entire reach in the 1940s: the water the captains raced is now Lake Roosevelt, and the rapids the boat had to beat survive only on old charts.
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