American West

American West is the odd one out in a fleet of near-identical hulls. Every other ship American Cruise Lines runs came out of Chesapeake Shipbuilding in Salisbury, Maryland, the yard the line owns and builds at continuously. She did not. She was built in 1995 by Nichols Bros. Boat Builders at Freeland, on Whidbey Island, for the American West Steamboat Company, and she spent her first fifteen years working the Columbia and the Snake under the name Queen of the West. She is still on those rivers and she is the oldest thing the line operates.

The wheel is real

The distinction worth making on this line is between a paddlewheeler and a paddlewheel replica. Three of the four boats in this part of the fleet were built at Salisbury in the last fifteen years in a period style, with red wheels on the stern. American West is a stern-driven paddlewheel riverboat that was designed as one. During the 2011 reconstruction American Cruise Lines put a new paddlewheel on her, and also added propulsion equipment alongside it for quieter running, so the honest description is that the wheel does real work and is not the only thing pushing her.

The rest of her numbers are those of a small river boat: 2,115 gross tons, fifty feet across the beam, and something in the region of seven feet of draft. That last figure is the one that matters on the Columbia, where the day is spent locking through dams rather than running open water.

What the rebuild changed, and what it did not

American Cruise Lines took her over and reconstructed her over the winter of 2010–11, staterooms, public rooms, galley and engine room all rebuilt, larger cabins, a new library, more private balconies, furniture built to order in North Carolina. She was back carrying passengers out of Portland in the spring of 2011. In 2022 the line redecorated and renamed its whole paddlewheel group: Queen of the Mississippi, Queen of the West and America became American Heritage, American West and American Splendor, while American Pride kept her name.

Note the phrasing on the balconies, because it is the thing to know before booking. The rebuild added more of them. It did not give every stateroom one. On the line’s modern riverboats (American Harmony and her sisters, working the same river), a private balcony is standard on every cabin. Here it is not, and a 1995 hull is a 1995 hull however carefully the inside of it has been redone.

Where she actually sails

Portland, Oregon, and nowhere else. Every departure she has leaves from Portland for the Columbia and the Snake, and hers is a late-season boat: the run of dates sits in the back half of the river season, from the end of August into October, after which the whole river shuts down for the winter.

What she sells is the standard product, not a stripped one. Most of her departures are the eight-night Columbia & Snake Rivers cruise, one-way upriver from Portland to Clarkston, Washington, Astoria at the river mouth, Kalama, The Dalles, a scenic day in the Columbia River Gorge, Richland in the Tri-Cities, Pendleton out on the high desert, and Lewiston and Clarkston at the head of navigation. That is the identical itinerary the 180-guest modern riverboats run, on a boat a third smaller and thirty years older, which is the whole reason to choose her.

The rest is the six-night Columbia River Gorge cruise, a round trip out of Portland that works only as far up as Hood River and The Dalles, the Gorge itself, the waterfalls and the dams, without the long haul into eastern Washington. It is the short form of the river for anyone who will not give up a full week.

Who she suits

People who came for the paddlewheel. If the reason you are looking at river cruising in America is the sternwheel itself, this is the boat in the fleet with the strongest claim to it, and she is small enough, a hundred and ten guests over four decks, that the whole passenger list eats in one room.

She is wrong for anyone who wants a new ship, and she is wrong for anyone who assumes a balcony comes with the cabin. She is wrong, too, for anyone who wants the river with a national park tour bolted onto the end of it, that is a product her modern fleetmates sell and she does not. Travelers who care more about the accommodation than the wheel should look at American Harmony, American Song or American Encore, running the same Portland-to-Clarkston week twenty-odd years younger, designed around the idea that every guest gets a door onto the outside.