Colonial Despatches

Kettle River is a tributary of the Columbia River, and flows south into Washington State near Christina Lake.1 To the First Nations people of the area, presumably the Sinixt,2 it was called Ne-hoi-al-pit-qua, and to the to early European settlers it was called Colvile River.3 The name Kettle River was adopted in reference to either the bubbling motions of the Kettle Falls or the hollow, kettle-shaped rock formations that line the riverbed.4

The Kettle River was bridged during the construction of the Dewdney Trail.5

• 1. Kettle River, BC Geographical Names Information System.
• 2. Sinixt Nation, Sinixt Nation Society.
• 3. G. P. V. Akrigg and H. B. Akrigg, British Columbia Place Names (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997), 135.
• 4. Ibid.
• 5. G. P. V. Akrigg and H. B. Akrigg, British Columbia Chronicle, 1847-1871 (Victoria: Discovery Press, 1977), 197.