This photograph shows Ralph Clapp’s barge dredging the Kootenai River in 1920s. He and his crew were using a donkey engine and boom to pull snags from the water; clearing the way for sternwheeler and river boat passage.
When a barge line was proposed for moving sacked grain from the Westside districts onto the Kootenai Valley Railway in 1930, the War Department authorized snag removal from the KV railroad bridge to Porthill. Eight to ten 40-ton barges and a tugboat were proposed for the new cooperative; which never came to pass.
Ralph Clapp’s Barge