Alexander Watson, a veteran shipbuilder, supervised the construction, for which he had recruited a crew of carpenters from Victoria, British Columbia.

She had three decks, the first one being reserved for freight, machinery and crew quarters, the second for passengers, including cabins and an observation saloon.

[citation needed] Lytton was designed to be a shallow draft vessel to allow her to negotiate rapids and other areas of low water.

Historian Downs, relying on accounts of the day described Lytton's departure on her first voyage, leaving Revelstoke: [with 'hearty good wishes and ... waving of handkerchiefs.'

At midnight ' a grand display of thunder and lightning ... greeted the steamboat, whose well-tinned and painted decks shed the water like a canvasback.

[6]The downriver voyage began on July 2, 1890 at the dock near where the new large bridge of the Canadian Pacific Railway crossed the Columbia River.

Lytton then steamed over to the Revelstoke smelter dock, where 65 tons of steel rails, fishplates and other track building supplies were loaded on board.

[2] The destination for these rail supplies was far down the lakes at Sproats Landing, BC or modern day Castlegar, where the Kootenay River joins the Columbia.

[2] Once the rail supplies were loaded, the trip down the Columbia and the lakes began on July 3, 1890 at 11:30 a.m., as crowds cheered on the dock and the nearby steamer Kootenai.

There were however no rail links in the Kootenay region between these transcontinental lines and the Canadian Pacific Railway, and steamers on the Arrow Lakes, including the Lytton were for a time the only connections between the railhead at Northport and the C.P.R.

From 1890 to 1897, Lytton was operated on the Arrow Lakes route between Revelstroke and Northport, Washington, although the northern terminus changed to Wigwam, BC as the C.P.R.

The resulting ore boom created a demand for steamboat and rail transportation to the mines near Trail and other parts of the Kootenay mountains.

[4] From 1897 to 1901, when the water was high enough Lytton was worked on the Columbia above Revelstoke to La Porte, which was at a place called Dalles des Morts, or in English, Death Rapids.