Steamboats Docked at Stevenson

The shriek of steam through a brass whistle, ringing across the Columbia's waters and echoing off the Gorge cliffs, signaled the approach of a steamboat. In early-day Stevenson, a sternwheeler arrival was a high point of a pioneer's day, often drawing most of the settlement to the river's edge. Supplies arrived, crops and goods were loaded, and passengers and baggage boarded. Stevenson fueled huge steamboat boilers with wood cut from surrounding forests, and legendary quantities of cordwood changed hands from dock to deck. Steamboats had their heyday on the Columbia from the 1850s to the 1920s.

Stevenson, Washington · United States