Kootenai bullion

[grizzly bare]

In Marx' book about buried treasures, he has a short listing for Idaho that includes the steamer barge Kootenai that sank in Lake Coeur D'Alene. Part of the cargo was 685 pounds of gold bullion which had not been recovered as of 1999.
Does anyone know if this has been recovered since? Supposedly it's in only 70 feet of water and covered with 20 feet of mud/silt.
I'm not very good at math, but using 12 ounces to the pound this comes out to 4 million dollars---at 16 ounces to the pound it becomes 5 million.
Definitely enough to be interesting to someone.

grizzly bare

 

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[FISHEYE]

The Lytton, under Captain Frank Odin, made her maiden voyage on July 2, 1890, with distinguished Canadian Pacific officials aboard, including W.C. Van Home. Even as the Lytton was under construction, the C.K.S.N. purchased the stern-wheeler "Kootenai" as a running mate for the Lytton. The Kootenai was about 140 feet long, of 371 gross tons and was rated slower than the Lytton's 12 1/2 miles per hour average speed. The Kootenai was used mostly on the 150 mile route between Robson, near where the Kootenay River joins the Columbia, to Revelstoke; and the Lytton steamed the swifter water south from Robson to Little Dalles, connecting there with the Spokane Falls and Northern Railway.

the 558 ton sternwheeled Kootenai. Constructed by the Portland-based shipbuilders Pacquet and Smith for one of CP?s contractors, H.M. McCartney and Company, she was launched onto the Columbia at the Little Dalles on April 2nd of 1885. After a successful maiden voyage on April 28th, the Kootenai worked all summer until an encounter with a sandbar on September 4th sent her limping back to the Little Dalles for repairs. By the time she was water-worthy again, it was November and McCartney & Co., having completed their contract, had her moth-balled at the repair yards.

Immediately upon incorporation, C&KSN bought and refurbished the old Kootenai, and hired Alexander Watson to build a new boat on the banks of the Columbia at Revelstoke. Launched in May of 1890, the 452 ton Lytton undertook her first revenue earning voyage on July 3rd when she set sail from Revelstoke bound for Sproat?s Landing downstream 155 miles with 60 tons of railroad steel for the Columbia and Kootenay Railway. On August 15th, C&KSN commenced working to a schedule with the Spokane Falls and Northern Railway to twice-weekly exchange passengers and freight on the railway?s docks at the Little Dalles.

At C&KSN?s new shipyards at Nakusp at the bottom of the Upper Arrow Lake, the family laid down the keel of the huge Nakusp and had the ornate, 1,100 ton white and black palace in the water on July 1st, 1895. That December 3rd the old Kootenai grounded and broke in a shallows in Upper Arrow Lake and was replaced on May 9th of the next year by the plain-Jane, 660 ton Nakusp-built Trail.

thats all i found on the "Kootenai" no mention of any gold.allthough that regions mountains was loaded with gold an silver.

 

[grizzly bare]

FISHEYE,
Thanks for the research! At least it lets me know that the possibility does exist. Now to look for newspaper stories from the time.

grizzly bare