All the iron and all the required machinery, including the boiler and steam engines, was produced by foundryman Thomas V. Smith in his ironworks at Oregon City.

The boat departed the base at Willamette Falls at 7:30 a.m., was at the Oregon City dock by 8:00 a.m., stopping at Milwaukie at 8:30 a.m., and reached Portland at 9:30 a.m. At 2:00 p.m. Belle steamed back upriver, reaching the falls by 4:00 p.m. (Because of a stretch of shallow water on the Willamette near the mouth of the Clackamas River known as the Clackamas Rapids, only smaller vessels could make this run.)

[2] By July 1855, Belle was on the route from Portland down the Willamette and then also ran up the Columbia to the lower Cascades, making three runs a week, under Captain Wells, with J.M.

[2][3][5] In the 1850s, the U.S. Army was engaged in forcing the First Nations to cede their dominion over the vast lands of the Oregon and Washington Territories and move onto reservations.

In late 1855 orders arrived to move the army's main base up from the Cascades to the Dalles, closer to the anticipated area of war operations in the next campaign season.

When the river was finally clear enough of ice, Belle and another boat, the Fashion started moving the Army's equipment up from Fort Vancouver.

Due to military blunders the troops were not able to trap the First Nations war party at the Upper Cascades; they slipped back into the forest.