Chilcotin had main, promenade and Texas decks, hot and cold running water and stateroom accommodation for fifty.

She was built at Soda Creek in late 1909 and early 1910, downstream from where the BC Express Company were building BX.

A friendly rivalry quickly developed between the two construction camps and as soon as Chilcotin's builders learned that BX was going to be 5 feet (1.5 m) wider than Chilcotin, they teased the workers from the other camp, saying that BX would never fit through the narrow channels of the Cottonwood and Fort George canyons and called her the "White Elephant".

This rumor spread far past the town of Soda Creek and soon the employees of the BC Express Company found themselves being consoled by their friends and associates for "having built a dud".

[3] Chilcotin worked on the upper Fraser until 1914, when, with the depressed economic conditions caused by World War I and the halting of the construction of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, her owners decided to retire her.