The Shoshone was the first steamboat built on the Snake River, Idaho, above Hells Canyon and the first of only two steamboats to be brought down through Hells Canyon to the lower Snake River. This was considered one of the most astounding feats of steamboat navigation ever accomplished.
Design and construction
In the mid-1860s there was a mining boom in the area of Boise, Idaho. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company had tried to run a steamboat, the Colonel Wright, up the Snake River through Hells Canyon, but this proved impossible. As an alternative, O.S.N. decided to build a steamboat on the upper Snake River; this vessel, the Shoshone, was launched in 1866 at Old Fort Boise, Idaho.
All the iron and machinery had to be packed in by mule overland, and a forge was set up to hammer the iron into fittings. The timber for her hull and cabins was cut in the mountains and hauled or floated to the construction site, where it was sawn into planks and other components for the vessel. It cost the company as much to build Shoshone as it took to build three boats elsewhere. Although she was a large boat and expensive, Shoshone drew less than two feet of water and had no difficulty navigating the river to Old's Ferry, Idaho.
Operations on upper Snake River
For a short time, under Captain Josiah Myrick, Shoshone carried miners and their equipment from Olds Ferry to the mining areas around Boise. The mining traffic then took a different route, and there was no business for the Shoshone. She was laid up for three years, with only two watchmen keeping an eye on her. This was frustrating for O.S.N. which had enjoyed spectacular success with almost all of its boats, often earning more on a single trip than it had cost (generally not long before) to build the steamboat in the first place.
Run through Hells Canyon
First attempt fails
John C. Ainsworth, president of O.S.N., gave orders to bring her down to the lower Snake River, but this proved difficult. On the first attempt, Shoshone'''s captain, Cy Smith, took her down Kerr and Cattle Rapids, but abandoned the effort at Lime Point (near Huntington, Oregon), saying with good reason that the whitewater ahead, Copper Ledge Falls, could not be run. Shoshone was laid up at Huntington, Oregon for another year.
Top men sent out for second run
In March 1870, Ainsworth assigned two of his best men, Capt. Sebastian "Bas" Miller and Chief Engineer Daniel E. "Buck" Buchanan, to bring her through the canyon or wreck in the attempt. Just reaching the Shoshone was a substantial journey in itself, as there were no railroads or highways of any kind. Miller and Buchanan took a steamboat up to Umatilla, Oregon, where they arrived in March 1870. This was the easy part, for after that they journeyed by buckboard into the Blue Mountains. When the roads ended, they traveled by sled over the snow; then, once the snow ended, by horseback, on foot, and finally by canoe.
Preparations for the run
Miller and Buchanan finally reached Shoshone in mid-April 1870, where they signed up one watchman, Livingston, as mate, and the other, Smith, as fireman. Another fellow who was around, W. F. Hedges, also signed on, and these five men became her crew. (Hedges later became a pilot on Puget Sound.) While Miller scouted out the river as best he could, Buchanan then overhauled the engines, tried to remedy the leaky seams in the Shoshone's planks, which made of mountain pine, had dried out, shrunk, and opened up narrow but long gaps between the planks in her hull. (This required water to be pumped over the hull until the planks swelled up.) In those days before electric lighting, Buchanan checked for leaks by leaving lighted candles in the hold of the boat, a risky proposition in a wooden boat that was, as one writer has said, nothing more than a "well-organized pile of kindling." If the boat were to be lost, it would likely be on account of the rapids rather than by fire, so to Buchanan the risk must have appeared reasonable.