The Hudson's Bay Company lost its trading monopoly in 1870 but its experience, organization and established presence enabled it to compete successfully with younger rivals. Increasingly steam power was applied wherever possible for the transportation of goods. Steamboats were first introduced on the Red River in 1858 and gradually spread to most of the rivers of the Northwest serving trading posts formerly supplied by York boats. Steamboats on the prairie were merely a temporary interlude in the transition from muscle to machine power, as the short season of open water combined with widely varying water levels in the rivers to make steamers unreliable. The boats were quickly replaced by railways when development made that feasible. In large areas of the North, however, the railway never arrived and steamboats continued in service for another half century. The photograph shows scows (less expensive in terms of cost and capable of hauling more freight than York boats), along with a steamboat in the background, about to leave Athabasca Landing on the Athabasca River north of Edmonton. Similar boats were used on the Peace, Slave and Mackenzie rivers, on the major connecting lakes and in a few Pacific coast rivers.
