Columbia (Arrow Lakes sternwheeler)

Sternwheelers Lytton (in distance), Columbia (center vessel with high pilot house), and Kootenai (on right) at Robson, BC, sometime between 1890 and 1894
History
Name:	Columbia
Owner:	Columbia and Kootenay Steam Navigation Company
Route:	Arrow Lakes
Builder:	Joseph Paquet or Alexander Watson
Cost:	$75,000
Maiden voyage:	August 20, 1891
In service:	1891
Out of service:	1894
Identification:	CAN 126880
Fate:	destroyed by fire
General characteristics
Type:	inland shallow-draft boat passenger/freighter
Tonnage:	534 gross; 378 net
Length:	152.6 ft (47 m)
Beam:	28 ft (9 m)
Depth:	6.3 ft (2 m) depth of hold
Installed power:	steam engines manufactured by Harlan & Hollingsworth of Wilmington, Delaware, twin single-cylinder, horizontally mounted, 17" bore by 72" stroke, 19 hp (14 kW) nominal
Propulsion:	sternwheel

Columbia was a sternwheel steamboat that ran on the Arrow Lakes in British Columbia from 1890 to 1894. Columbia should be distinguished from the many other vessels with the same or similar names, including in particular the propeller-driven steamboat Columbia that ran on the Arrow Lakes for many years.

Columbia was the fourth large sternwheeler to run on the 130-mile (210 km) long Arrow Lakes (and adjacent stretches of the Columbia River). Before the construction of the Keenleyside Dam in the 1960s, there were two Arrow Lakes, called the upper and lower, which were separated by a stretch of shallow water known as the Narrows. The lakes are part of the Columbia River, which flows into the upper Arrow Lake at Arrowhead, British Columbia, and begins again at the southern end of the lower lake near the towns of Robson and Castlegar. Steamers running on Arrow Lakes typically started from the railheads. In the early 1890s the northern railhead was Revelstoke about 25 miles (40 km) up the Columbia River from Arrowhead, where the transcontinental line of the Canadian Pacific Railway crossed the Columbia. In the south, the Great Northern Railway had reached Little Dalles, Washington by the 1890s. Rail construction was ongoing however. C.P.R. was building an extension south from Revelstoke along the east side of the Columbia River, which would eventually reach Arrowhead. By 1894 the extension had only gone as far as the town of Wigwam, about half way between Revelstoke and Arrowhead, which became the northernmost point on the route for Columbia.

Columbia was built in the United States at Little Dalles (now known as Northport for the Columbia and Kootenay Steam Navigation Company. The vessel's hull had been built at Portland, Oregon then disassembled into sections and shipped by rail to Northport to be reassembled and launched. On the Arrow Lakes Columbia was the fifth sternwheeler and the largest ever built up to that time.