AGPS Historical Guide

IDAHO STATE

Glacier Lake Missoula Damn “GPS Needed”

In 13,000 BC a finger of the continental ice sheet dammed the Clark Fork River and formed a lake 2,000 feet deep and 200 miles eastward, encompassing Flathead Valley and Missoula County in Montana. This glacial ice dam created what is now known as Lake Missoula. The dam broke over a period of time with 500 cubic miles of water rushing out of the Clark Fork Valley at 60 mph. The water shot out at a rate of 10 times the combined flow of all the rivers of the world. The 42 separate floods that followed created the Rathdrum Prairie and the scablands of Eastern Washington.

In 1821 while exploring for the Hudson’s Bay Company, Alexander Ross described the Grand Coulee and the aftermath of the Lake Missoula flood in the Central Washington scablands: “…the whole form is in every respect the appearance of a deep bed of a great river or lake, and now dry and scooped out of the level and barren plain…according to Indian tradition it is the abode of evil spirits.”

This view of the Clark Fork Valley, above Clark Fork Idaho, is the approximate location of the glacial ice dam that created Lake Missoula. This view is from Scotsman Peak, the highest peak in Bonner County, Idaho. AGPS Coordinates: N 48º11’24.70” W 116º 4’ 39.88”

Weippe

AGPS Coordinates: N 46º 22’ 65”, W 115º 56’ 50”

Elevation 3014

In September 20, 1805 journeying toward the Clearwater River, six men, under William Clark, met the Nez Perce Indians in this area. Clark first saw the three frightened Indian boys who hid in the grass. Finding two, he reassured them with small presents and “sent them forward to the village.” The Indian people though were naturally somewhat nervous in greeting the first whites to reach their land, fed Clark’s men. The next day, Clark “collected a horse load of roots and 3 salmon” to send back to the main expedition.

Lewis and Clark called the prairie the “camas flats,” “quawmash flats,” or “quawmash ground” because of the camas roots used by the Nez Perce to make cakes.

The Nez Perce assured Lewis and Clark that a water route to the Pacific via the Clearwater and its tributaries to the Snake and Columbia was possible, and they provided the explorers with a chart of the river system.

On September 24, 1805, the expedition left Weippe Prairie with Twisted Hair and some Nez Perce and moved north to the Clearwater River. The following day they moved farther downriver to begin building canoes, at a site which came to be known as Canoe Camp (about five miles west of present Orofino). With the help of the Indians, they constructed large canoes and, leaving their horses for safekeeping with the tribe, they began their descent of the Clearwater River on October 7, 1805.

“Spanish horses, handed up through Apache raiders to Shoshone traders reached the Interior before 1725. Soon they were being bread, and dispersed across the Rockies to the Plains tribes. Some Oregon chiefs held up to 5,000 head apiece. The horse brought greater mobility: swift travel, heavy transport, and easy contact with tribes near and far. Food was more assured. The hunt and warfare became efficient and exciting. Greater leisure and sophistication resulted. Women’s status rose. Village groups drifted to more open country. Some clans or individuals reorganized into larger bands. Intertribal communications, commercial rendezvous, and the whole pattern of trade improved. For tribes like the Southern Okanogan, river trade was now supplemented by an expanded range. In short, the horizon of the Indian widened, and his development intensified.” The Jesuits and the Indian Wars of the Northwest, Robert Ignatius Burns, p. 8.

Clear Water River

AGPS Coordinates: N 46º 30’ 12”, W 116º 19’ 48”

Elevation 980

Clark reported of Canoe Camp, “I got the Twisted hare to draw the river from his Camp down which he did with great cherfullness on a white Elk Skin, from the 1s fork which is a few seven miles below, to the large fork on which the So So ne or Snake Indians fish, is South 2 Sleeps; to a large river (Columbia River) which falls in on the N.W. side and into which the Clark river (the Bitterroot-Clark Fork system) empties itself is 5 Sleeps from the mouth of that river to the falls is 5 Sleeps…one other Indian gave me a like account of the Countrey.”

On their return trip in 1806, the eastbound explorers were forced by a late spring to spend about seven weeks with the Nez Perce, waiting for the snow to melt in the Bitterroots. On May 4, 1806, on the Snake River, near the Clearwater, the expedition chanced to meet a party of Nez Perce, including Chief Tetoharsky, their downriver guide of the year before. With the Chief again acting as their guide, the group preceded southeasterly toward the Nez Perce camps. Lewis and Clark met in council with the Chiefs, and on May 13^th moved north of the Clearwater and set up camp at a wooded site on the river bottom, nearly opposite the present town of Kamiah. Utilizing an old Indian habitation, the explorers erected a shelter where they remained for about a month. Unnamed by the expedition, the site became known as Long Camp, Camp Kamiah, or Camp Chopunnish (their name for the Nez Perce), and the expedition stayed there longer than any place on their journey, except Fort Mandan, Fort Clatsop, and Camp Wood.

On June 10^th the expedition moved their campsite about two miles to Weippe Prairie “…at which place we intend to delay a few days for the laying in some meat by which time we calculate that the snows will have melted more off the mountains and the grass raised to a sufficient height for our houses to live.” Insert footnote.

Their campsite was at a “point of woods” near the more easterly of the two Nez Perce villages they had visited the previous year. This last campsite before re-crossing the Bitterroots was located about two miles south of the present town of Weippe, in the meadows surrounding Collins (now Jim Ford) Creek.

On June 15^th the expedition made its first attempt to cross the Lolo Trail; however, the nearly impassible terrain forced them to turn back on June 17. Clark wrote, “under these circumstances we conceived it madness in this stage of the expedition to proceed without a guide who could certainly conduct us to the fish wears on the Kooskooske, as our horses could not possible sustain a journey of more than four or five days without food.”

On June 24, 1806, with sixty-five horses, ample food and about six Nez Perce guides, the expedition again set out across the Lolo Trail and after a six-day journey, arrived at Travelers Rest on June 30^th.

After meeting the Nez Perce in his explorations of the Rocky Mountains, Captain Bonneville observed: “Simply to call these people religious would convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades their whole conduct. Their honesty is immaculate, and their purity of purpose, and their observance of the rites of their religion, and most uniform and remarkable-they are, certainly, more like a nation of saints than a horde of savages.” The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, p. 59.

Lewiston, Idaho

Lewis and Clark Discovery Center

AGPS Coordinates: N 49º22.094 W 117º03.432

Lewis and Clark passed through here to the Pacific Ocean and returned through here on their return trip when the U.S. Navy was unable to pick them up on the Pacific Coast, having been delayed by the Tripoli pirates in North Africa.

Lolo Pass

AGPS Coordinates: 47º27.3N, 115º41.7W

In 1806 Lewis and Clark waited six weeks for deep snow to melt on the high ridges of the Lolo Trail to the east of Long Camp- Milepost 67.6.

Their route home blocked, they spent four of the six weeks (May 14^th-June 10^th) at their long camp across the river. They hunted, fished, and amused themselves showing the Nez Perce Indians “the power of magnetism, the spyglass, the compass, watch, air gun and sundry other articles equally novel and incomprehensible to them.”

They met 3 Skect-so-mish (Schitsu’amsh) and reported 120 lodges along “Wayton Lake” (Lake Coeur d Alene). It is likely the French speaking Iroquois trappers living among the Flathead found the S’chilsu’mush schrewd traders and named them Coeur d Alene, “heart of the Awl” or “Pointed hearts”.

Coeur d Alene

AGPS Coordinates: 47º41’34”N, 116º46’48”W

In 1807 David Thompson of the Northwest Company extensively explored this Coeur d’Alene. French Canadian fur traders allegedly named the local Indian tribe the Coeur Alene out of respect for their tough trading practices. Translated from French, Coeur d Alene literally means “heart of the awl” which might mean “sharp-hearted” or “shrewd.” The French claimed that the Indians had hearts no bigger than the point of a shoemakers awl. The Bonanza Trail, Muriel Sibell Wolle, p 248.

Others interpret “Heart of the Awl” to translate to “Eye of the Needle”, perhaps referring to the narrow passage through which the lake empties into the Spokane River on its way to the Columbia. The Coeur d Alene’s called themselves “the ones that were found here.”

In 1842 Father DeSmet, on his way from St. Mary’s Mission in Montana to Vancouver, met the Coeur d Alene Indians at their largest camp called Nichim Kilgos, which was located just at the head of the Spokane River, near the present site of North Idaho College. AGPS Coordinates: 47º4N, 116º46’W. A lot chapel was erected, the first mission house built in the wilderness. He found the Indians, “…wild and savage, warlike and treacherous, addicted to all the immoralities and brutalities, superstitions and idolatries, characteristic of the “bad” Indian.” History of North Idaho, p. 756.

One of the stories attributed to Father DeSmet while working with the mountain tribes was reported in his biography:

“While residing at one of the mountain missions, an overbearing, sullen Indian, who was feared on account of his gigantic strength, swore to kill the missionary, and do away with the religion he preached. One day Father DeSmet started off on horseback to visit a neighboring post, armed only with his breviary and his riding-whip. Suddenly, he saw the enraged Indian descending upon him, brandishing his tomahawk and emitting war-whoops. Nothing would have been easier than to flee, but that would have meant a triumph for the fanatic. In a flash the Father sprang to the ground, and before his adversary could strike, gave him a blow with his fist that knocked the tomahawk out of his hand. The Indian stooped to get it, and as he did so Father DeSmet seized him, threw him, and, holding him on the ground, administered a good cowhiding…Father DeSmet promised him his liberty upon condition that he would himself tell the whole tribe that he had been beaten by the Black Robe. Will-nilly, the proud warrior was obliged to submit.” The Life of Father De Smet, p. 177.

In a letter to Bishop Hughes entitled The Life of Father DeSmet; Father De Smet also described the Indian’s cooking techniques:

The Indians have a bizarre method of cooking certain dishes which they, however, consider delicious. The cooking is done solely by the women, who first work up a mixture of grease and blood in their hands and then boil this in a little water. Then they fill a kettle with grease and meat which they have chewed into a pulp. Often half stew. They chew and chew again mouthful after mouthful, then put the whole in the kettle. This is the far-famed Rocky Mountain hash! Add to this delectable dish cakes made of crushed ants and grasshoppers dried in the sun, and you have some idea of the delicacies of the Assiniboin table. The Life of Father De Smet, p. 184.

Another story attributed to the priest:

Surprised one night in the depth of the forest by a snowstorm, Father DeSmet climbed a tree, and, in searching about for a safe spot in which to spend the night, discovered that the tree was hollow. Aha! Said he, here I will be safely sheltered, and proceeded to descend inside. Arriving at the bottom, he felt something move under his feet, which turned out to be a brood of harmless young cube. Soon, however, the sound of heavy grunts reached him. The mother bear was returning; her claws were already on the bark. She climbed up, then down she came, backward. What was the nest move? With great presence of mind the missionary seized her tail with both hands and pulled it violently. The frightened bear quickly climbed up again and disappeared into the forest. Master of the lodging, he remained there quietly until daylight permitted him to continue on his way. The Life of Father De Smet, p. 295.

In 1846 the Oregon boundary dispute (or Oregon question) arose as a result of competing British and American claims to the Pacific Northwest of North America in the first half of the 19^th century. The Oregon Treaty ended disputed joint occupation of the area when Britain ceded all right to land south of the 49^th Parallel in 1846.

“…The tribes of the Jesuit missions were thus to fall under the settlers’ provisional government, and then under the territories of Oregon (1848), Washington (1853), Washington and Idaho (1863), and Washington-Idaho-Montana (1864). The Flathead tribe in modern Montana was successively under five such separate jurisdictions within twenty years. The artificial border of Canada meanwhile ran through such mission tribes as the Okanogans, Lakes, Kalispels, and Kutenais. Until 1858 military policy for the Interior was based upon its natural destiny as a huge Indian territory closed to Whites, with the Cascades and Rockies serving as walls of separation between the two races. Nevertheless, a section of the
Walla County; it measures 200 miles by 450, comprising 90,000 square miles. In 1859 something called Spokane County ran from the Cascades to the Rockies, and included most of modern Washington, all of Idaho and Wyoming, and a good piece of Montana.

Mining changed this situation abruptly in the 60’s. The summer of 1861 saw 2,500 miners and 5,000 other men in central Idaho. In Montana 670 people arrived by 1863, over 18,000 by 1870, over 39,000 by 1880, and over 132,000by 1890. Little towns made their appearance, such as Boise, Helena, and, on Nez Perce land, the bustling river port of Lewiston. Brief, dazzling strikes launched waves of miners onto the country of the Okanogans, the Kettles, the Kutenais, the Flatheads. The transcontinental railroad soon passed near the southeastern back door of the old Oregon country. Roads, farms, newspapers, churches, stage lines, and schools all appeared in the Interior with surprising promptness. Vigilante action flares luridly. The cattle industry started up on the open range. The Northern Pacific was about to cut straight across the Indian lands. In the space of a child’s growing up, the Interior transformed itself into White man’s land.” The Jesuits and the Indian Wars of the Northwest, Robert Ignatius Burns, p. 32.

In 1861 John Mullan built the military road through this area from Fort Benton to Walla Walla. Portions of the old road are now occupied by Sherman Street and Mullan Avenue. The winter was so severe during construction that one of his men lost both legs to frostbite, twenty five other came down with scurvy. His road cost approximately $1.60 per mile. The Great West, p. 369.

In 1871 when the Coeur d Alene Indians learned that the Government had seized Rome and threatened the Pope, they wrote Pius IX:

Most merciful Father, it is not temerity, but love which moves us to write to you. We are, it is true, the most humble of all the Indian tribes, while you are the greatest among living men…thirty winters ago we were a savage people, miserable in both body and soul until you sent us the great Black Robe, Father De Smet…Hence, Father, hearing that you are in affliction, we wish to thank you for your charity, and express to you our great love and deep sorrow in learning that some of your wicked children continue to cause you suffering after having robbed you of your house…We have a number of soldiers, not trained for war, but to keep order in our camp. If these men can be of service to the Pope, we offer them joyfully, and they will esteem themselves fortunate I n being able to spill their blood and give their lives for out good Father Pius IX…

Vincent, of the Stellam family.

Andrew Seltis, of the family of Emote.”

The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. 1801-1873, Apostle of the Rocky Mountains, Fr. E. Laveille, S.J., (1915), p. 369.

Forest Cemetery

AGPS Coordinates: 47º 41’ 05”N, W 116º 47’ 27”

This cemetery is 20.7 acres of rolling lawn and pine trees. The cemetery was originally owned by the U.S. Army at Fort Sherman from 1877 to 1898. In the early 1900’s the city of Coeur d Alene petitioned President Theodore Roosevelt to convey the old army post cemetery as a municipal cemetery. In 1905, by proclamation, President Roosevelt gifted the City of Coeur d Alene this cemetery. Descendants of Betsy Ross, creator of the American flag, erected a monument in her honor and many Civil War Veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic are buried here.

Buried here is the Hero of the Great 1910 Fire, Big Ed Pulaski. Inventor of the pulaski tool still used by the USDA Forest Service. He saved lives of forty forest fire fighters by holding the crew at gunpoint in an abandoned mine tunnel near Wallace, Idaho. All firefighters became overcome by smoke and passed out. Five died. After his recovery, Pulaski carried the scars from the fire on his hands and face and was partially blind. The 1910 fire destroyed nearly 5,000 square miles in two day firestorm pushed by 80 mile per hour winds. Eight-plus people died. Big Ed is buried with his wife Emma.

In 1880 a portion of the town site was purchased from the Northern Pacific by C.F. Yeaton, the old post trader at the fort. Another portion was purchased by Tony Tubbs about the same time.

In 1883 General Isaac Stevens, Governor of Washington Territory, while surveying the area for a railroad route described Coeur d Alene as: “One of the most beautiful features of the country is the Coeru d Alene lake, which is embosomed in the midst of gently sloping hills covered with a dense forest growth, the irregularity of its form and the changing aspect of the scenery about it makes it one of the most picturesque objects in the interior.” History of North Idaho, p.787.

December 15, 1883 the following article appeared in the Portland “Oregonian”:

Tony A. Tubbs arrived here from lake Coeur d Alene yesterday morning. He reports great activity in building and other improvements in the town of Coeur d Alene City. Several hotels are projected; a large restaurant is being built; wharves are being constructed for the two new steamers which are being rapidly pushed to completion; a portable sawmill will be shipped from here to-day which will be put into operation immediately; a large force of men are getting out saw logs for which they receive good prices; a large warehouse is being built near the steamer landing and lots are selling like hot cakes. So rapidly have they advanced and so valuable have they become since the Coeur d Alene mines have proven rich, that Mr. Tubbs has bought back a large number of the lots he sold in his town site, in some cases paying $200 profit to the seller. C.C. McCoy has made arrangements to start within a few weeks a well equipped line of daily stages between Rathdrum on the Northern Pacific, and the Coeur d Alene mines, via the lake.

In 1885 the population of Coeur d Alene was 150.

When General William T. Sherman ordered a fort constructed on the lake in the 1870’s, he gave it the name Fort Coeur d Alene, hence the name of the city that grew around it. On April 12, 1887, the name of the fort was changed to Fort Sherman by Government Order 30, A.G.O. 1887.

In 1887 the Coeur d Alene Indians agreed to a treaty with the U.S. Government giving them the headwaters of the Spokane River to the Clearwater River. The Big Burn.

Coeur d Alene Village was incorporated with Isaac S. Daly the first mayor. On November 10, 1889 the city jail burnt to the ground, killing P.J. Breen who had been arrested the previous evening on a petty charge. At the inquest, the jury found that: “the deceased came to his death by his own hands in an attempt to burn his way out of jail.” History of North Idaho, p. 789.

Steamboats made it possible for people to have easy access to the area around Coeur d Alene. The first steamboat, the Amelia Wheaton, was built by Captain Sorenson for the fort, but was extensively used to transport miners to the silver valley. During weekdays the steamboats carried freight, mail, businessmen, and lumberjacks to communities, rail lines and mills on the lake and up the rivers. On Sundays, excursion boats carried passengers on pleasure trips. The Red Collar Line and the White Star Navigation Company controlled the steamboat business on Lake Coeur d Alene. Steamboat transportation peaked in about 1915 when the automobile was gaining popularity and railroads were well established. Steamboats continued to operate into the late 1930’s but the grandeur of those early years was gone.

In April, the “Spokane” paddle wheel with 19 passengers overturned on the Coeur d Alene River, killing 5, including the clerk of the City of Spokane and a miner whose body was found with $16,000 of gold.

In 1885 the U.S. Land Office was established in Coeur d Alene with Robert McFarland as register.

1888 Frederic Remington made a wood cut depicting hunters with a pack train and the remote nature of the Coeur d Alene’s.

Library of Congress

In describing the terrain of the area, Father Piere-Jean DeSmet with his mule Lizette, observed: “I had seen scenes of landscapes of awful grandeur, but this one certainly surpasses all others in horror.”

1893 Tony Tubbs, who had supplied food and materials to the federal troops during the labor unrest, made 28 separate sales of 44 lots in Coeur d Alene in an area that was to become Tubbs Hill park at the Third Street boat ramp. Tubbs also served as the first Justice of the Peace and built the first hostelry called Hotel d’Landing.

Numbers on the main trail of Tubbs Hill are found at 27 points along the Trail which identify individual points of interest. A free

Brochure is available from the Coeur d Alene Parks Department. Or at tubbshill.com.

In 1906 D.C. Corbin built the Spokane Falls and Idaho railroad, later the Coeur d Alene branch of the Northern Pacific railroad. On August 14, 1906, Austin Corbin II built a house on South Tubbs Hill, one concrete foundation block can still be seen. AGPS Coordinates: 47.66380º N 116.78251ºW , point # 21 on the trail.

In 1941 Playland Pier existed on what is now Independence Point, . AGPS Coordinates: 47.40.413º N 116.47.224ºW, the theme park opened in the summer of 1942 and offered an assortment of rides such as a Ferris Wheel, Bumper Cars, Carousel, Kiddie Coaster and Swings as well as concession stands and games. A bathhouse underneath served as changing rooms for swimmers enjoying the City Beach. The amusement park burned in 1975 and was replaced by a grassy area with parking for people who still go downtown and enjoy the beach.

World War II flying ace Colonel Gregory “Pappy” Boyington was born in Coeur d Alene on December 4, 1912 and was a member of the AVG (Flying Tigers) and later the commander of the famous Black Sheep Squadron. Lt. Col. Greg “Pappy” Boyington, USMC, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his courageous efforts during World War II. After he was shot down and captured by the Japanese, he was beat and tortured once his identity was discovered. Even though he spent the last 20 months of the war as a POW, he still is one of the highest scoring aces of all time because of his skill with the famous Flying Tigers of the American Volunteer Group in China and with the Black Sheep Squadron (VFM-214) flying in the South Pacific. The Coeur d Alene Airport is named Boyington Field in his honor.

Hydroplane racing was an annual event in Coeur dAlene from 1958 to 1968, more than 100,000 people took over the town to watch the first races in 1958 when 14 boats raced.

Coeur d Alene Federal Building

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 40.474 W 116º 46.860

The Federal Building is a prominent building in Coeur d Alene, a city located in the North Idaho panhandle on the northern shore of Lake Coeur d Alene. The town of Coeur d Alene was first known in the 1880’s as Fort Sherman, a military camp established for protecting farmers and miners from further Indian uprisings.

Coeur d Alene was incorporated in 1906 as a city of the “second class”. This action represented the tremendous growth in the city and throughout Idaho. Four railway lines entered the city, including the electric Interurban which carried passengers and mail to and from Spokane. A steamer line also operated, providing marine mail service to St. Joe at the south end of Lake Coeur d Alene.

Coeur d Alene was selected in 1911 as the site for a new federal courthouse to serve the new judicial district which encompassed Idaho’s three northern panhandle counties—Shoshone, Bonner, and Kootenai.

A federal allocation for the new courthouse of $100,000 was granted executive approval when President William Taft signed the bill on February 23, 1911. Nearly a year later, on February 5, 1912 the site of the Federal Building was acquired for $13,200.

The Coeur d Alene Federal Building was designed as a Class III. This class was characterized as having brick veneer with terra cotta or stone trim, fireproof floors, wood windows and doors, and limited use of marble or more expensive finished. Work began in August of 1927 with L.L. Welch of Welch and Fritz of San Diego as the general contractor. Construction costs were estimated as $266,000 in October, 1927. Construction took approximately fifteen months and was completed by the end of 1928.

The Coeur d Alene Federal building was the subject of more recent history in September, 1986 when a bomb was planted outside the building by members of the right wing terrorist group, Aryan Nation. The explosion did little damage but galvanized the community to oust the terrorist group with judicial action.

Sand Point

Coordinates: 48º09’04”N, 116º45”28”

Sandpoint is located in the center of Bonner County and is the County Seat. David Thompson, explorer, cartographer, and fur trader for the North West Company mentioned “a point of sand” in his 1809 journal.

In 1880 Robert Weeks opened the first general store in the settlement. The post office at Venton was moved to what is now Sandpoint and it was first known as Pen Oreille. It was while Emma Weeks, Robert’s wife, was postmistress that the town and the railway station were named Sandpoint.

In 1884 W.A. Baillie-Grohman described early Sandpoint: “…obliged me during 1884 to be frequently for days at a time in Sandpoint, the nearest rail and post station, which then afforded the only approach to Kootenay. In this wretched hole, one of the “tough” towns in the tough territory of Idaho, where shooting scrapes and “hanging bees” were common events.” On payday Baillie-Grohman observed: “It was that the monthly pay-car had passed through Sandpoint that afternoon, and hence all the male population in the place with the exception of Weeks were “filling up” as fast as the six whiskey dens in the place could bring about that happy end…I knew Sandpoint then known also as Hangtown, could hold its own for depravity.”

Major Fred B. Reed confirmed the early image of Sandpoint: “I was through here with the Northern Pacific construction gang in 1880 and Sandpoint was the toughest place in the United States. Over at the end of your big bridge was “Hangtown” and it was over there that we had our necktie parties.”

In 1892 McFarland House, AGPS Coordinates: N 48º 16’ 01” W 116º 32’ 50” is located on the corner of Highway 95 and 1^st Avenue was originally owned by Jack Waters. The Pend Oreille News of then Sand Point ran an article about the death of Waters on April 30, 1892. Apparently Waters was accidentally shot when he was passing by the local slaughterhouse. Frank Hull who was employed by the Sandpoint Butchers was killing a beef and the bullet ricocheted and hit Waters in the arm. Waters was carried into a building near the slaughterhouse and a Dr. Dutton was called. The doctor told Waters that his arm would have to be amputated. Dr. Harvey who was called in for a second opinion concurred that it had to come off. Waters was put on the train to Spokane where his arm was amputated and he subsequently died.

Jack Waters, an unmarried man about 50 years of age, came to what was then Sand Point during the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad. He owned 160 acres of land in Sandpoint in an area called Whistletown. He left no will and Ignatz Weil eventually claimed the property for services rendered in settling his affairs. The Weil’s apparently lived on the homestead house on Walters land for a period before building what the paper called “Sandpoint’s finest house in town.” The property was called the Weil Addition and was on land previously owned by Jack Waters. Due to bad investments the home was lost and purchased by Mr. and Mrs. L.D. McFarland, a pioneer family of Sandpoint and Bonner County.

In 1893 L.D. Farmin, agent for Great Northern Railroad filed on a tract of land which included the original town site. The town was incorporated in 1900. In the same year, a fire started at the Northern Pacific depot and Park Hotel and spread to nearby buildings. To stop the fire from spreading a home owned by Mr. Hines was blown up with dynamite.

In 1903 The Northern Idaho News reported the opening of Sandpoint’s second hospital by stating: Dr. Ones F., Page established a hospital in the residence of Alex and Rosa Piatt at 719 North 3^rd Avenue.” This site was 50 yards from the building that housed the Sandpoint Hospital of Dr. Nathan Goddard. Mrs. Piatt was the hospital matron in charge of the care of six or seven patients about half the number that could be cared for in the existing hospital. Page had the same insurance coverage as did Goddard, by offering to the public a ticket that covered a person for twelve months for $12. This covered the holder to medical treatment, surgery, hospitalization and medicine for a year without additional charge.

In 1906 a Sandpoint paper reported discovery of four skeletons found by a worker while digging a ditch for a water main. At first the remains were thought to be the bodies of Indians because it was known that an Indian burial ground had been in the area. Each Skelton had been placed in a wooden coffin and one of them was a red headed woman. It was later determined that one body was of a man who went into a local saloon and was taken suddenly sick and died. His sickness and death was a mystery. The red headed woman and her lover had quarreled over the dead man and the woman shot her boyfriend. That was grave number two. She killed herself by an overdose of whiskey and morphine and grave number three belonged to her. The last grave was that of a man who was shot through the heart during a gambling argument.

In 1908 Sandpoint’s first jail, the “Apple Box” was replaced by the new city hall.

In 1908 Mrs. L.D. McFarland (see the McFarland House) spoke at the City Council for the Women’s Club requesting a “strict ordinance providing a penalty be passed forbidding people from expectorating on the sidewalks and in public places.” She encouraged the Council to see that citizens use “disinfectants in all needed places.”

In 1908 the first Sandpoint bridge connecting Sagle and Sandpoint was started. The bridge was supported by 1,540 pilings and covered a distance of almost two miles. Near the center was a steel lift which allowed the steam boat traffic to pass. The bridge was completed on March 11, 1910 and was advertised as the longest wooden bridge in the world.

During the great depression a second bridge over Pend Oreille River was constructed. It was built with help from the Works Progress Administration and was dedicated on March 3, 1934.

In 1910 the Power House of the Northern Idaho & Montana Power Company was completed at a cost of nearly $200,000. As the Pend Oreille Review stated: “The new plant in every detail is modern and up-to-date, and one of the most substantial in the northwest.” A 500 kilowatt, 670 horsepower, Allis-Chalmers engine was used in the power plant. In later years the mode of power transmission had changed, the old building was used as a place for storage. In 1972 the old power house was used as the Sandpoint Marina and subsequently into office space.

AGPS Coordinates: N 48º 16’ 79” W 116º 32’ 12”

On November 10, 1916 The Pend Oreille Review reported: “New Depot Open-To be celebrated.” The depot was constructed of brick and capped with a green tile roof. “There is one large waiting room, a rest room for the ladies and a smoking compartment for the gentlemen. Below stairs is the heating plant and the septic tank…Cluster lights have been placed about the outside of the depot while eight posts carrying large candle-power lights have been spaced along the brick platform. The total cost of the construction is about $25,000.”

AGPS Coordinates: N 48º 16’ 5086.” W 116º 32’ 43.23”

Schweitzer Mountain

AGPS Coordinates: N 48º 21’ 56.01” W 116º 19’ 58” Elevation 4630

In 1930 Schweitzer Mountain was named after an old Swiss hermit who lived at the bottom of the basin. He had been in the Swiss military but beyond that, little is known about the man who gave the mountain his name.

People began skiing at Schweitzer as early as 1933 but it was Jim Brown who first became aware of Schweitzer’s potential as a ski area.

After World War II, Sandpoint was in need of a new hospital. A citizens committee investigated the use of Building 1027 from Farragut Naval Station which had been the infirmary for the base. The building was a block long and had to be cut in half to be floated up lake Pond Oreille to Sandpoint. The doors for the new hospital were opened in 1950.

In 1956 the third bridge was built across the Pend Oreille River, but could no longer be called the worlds longest wooden bridge as it was made of concrete and steel.

The fourth and final “Long Bridge” was dedicated on September 23, 1981

and was built along side the previous span which is used as a walking-bike path. AGPS Coordinates: N 48º 15’ 06”, W 116º 32” 64”

Seneacquoteen Cemetery

AGPS Coordinates: 48º09’04”N, 116º45”28”

Seneacquoteen Crossing

Long before white man discovered this river, Indians crossed at this area.

Fur traders, surveyors and miners followed an old Indian trail that followed the river at Seneacquoteen, a Kalispell word meaning “crossing.”

David Thompson with the North West Company, passed here commenting on the Sandy Point at the location where the Pend Oreille River flowed out of Lake Pend Oreille. Thompson left the Clark Fork River traveling to the Spokan House near Cusick, Washington on his journey to Astoria on the Pacific Coast.

During the Kootenai Gold Rush of 1864, a wagon road came from Walla Walla to a ferry here. The Wild Horse trail ran north to the Kootenay mines in British Columbia.

Seneaquoteen is one of the oldest settlements in the county. The Hudson’s Bay Company had a trading post here and in 1864 when the territorial legislature created Kootenai County, Seneaquoteen was named as the temporary county seat. Andrew Christenson was the postmaster and ran a general store. A saw mill was operated by the La Clede Lumber Company. History of North Idaho.

December 22, 1864 the Idaho Legislature granted a license to operate a ferry to Charles H. Campfield and Associates. The authorized location was to be “12 miles above the point where the military or Boundary Commission roads crosses said river.” The road referred to was also known as the Seneacquoteen Trail. The Pend d’Oreille was the river. The approved fare schedule was : “for each wagon and two animals $3.00; each additional span of horses or cattle, $1.00; each man and more, $1.50; each pack animal, $1.00; each footman 50 cents; loose animals other than sheep or hogs, per head, 25 cents; sheep or hogs, per head, 10 cents.”

Between 1901 & 1906 Seneaquoteen Ferry, Pend O Reille River Library of Congress

In 1893 The Markham family found a male drowned on their property, starting the Senequoteen cemetery. There are many graves with only surnames on the stones and several that are just “unknown”.

Photo of the “Kootenai Woman” was reportedly taken at

Seneacquoteen Crossing

Fort Hall

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º 01’ 49.54”, W 112º 25’ 30.86” Elevation 4458

For Hall was built by an ambitious Bostonian, Nathaniel Wyeth as a supply center for fur traders and Native Americans. Wyeth had plans to develop the post with the Hudson’s Bay Company. When this failed to materialize, he sold the operation to them and the Hudson’s Bay Company began operations in June 1838.

Fort Hall, Oregon Territory

Library of Congress

Fort Hall became a welcomed supply stop for westbound emigrants; it continued in operation until 1856.

Romanized View of the Oregon Trail

“Emigrants crossing the Plains”

Library of Congress

The route west on the Oregon Trail came through South Pass and continued to Fort Hall, where emigrants elected to continue to Oregon Territory or to California. It has been estimated that 20,000 died in route west, 10 died for every mile traveled.

South Pass and Wind River Mountains

Library of Congress

More realistic view of the 1890’s Oregon Trail Experience

Farragut Naval Training Station

AGPS Coordinates: 47º32’53”N, 116º21’25”W

David Glasgow Farragut (July 5, 1801-August 14, 1870) was flag officer of the United States Navy during the American Civil War. He was the first rear admiral, vice admiral and full admiral of the Navy. He is remembered in popular culture for his order at the Battle of Mobile Bay: “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

David Glasgow Farragut

During World War II this site was Farragut Naval Training Station, a major training base of the U.S. Navy.

Eleanor Roosevelt allegedly noticed Lake Pend Oreille on a flight to Seattle. Knowing that President Roosevelt was seeking a location for a secure inland naval training center, she mentioned it to him and he made a secret tour of the area. Ground was broken in March 1942 and by September the base had a population of 55,000, making it the largest city in Idaho. Liberty trains to Spokane ran three times daily. At the time, Farragut was the second-largest naval training center in the world.

Over 293,000 sailors received basic training at Farragut during its 30 months of existence. The last recruit graduated in March 1945 and the facility was decommissioned in June 1946. It was also used as a POW camp; nearly 900 Germans worked as gardeners and maintenance men.

From 1946-49 it was the site of the Farragut College and Technical Institute, which did not re-open in late 1949 due to financial difficulties.

The park adjoins the deepwater Lake Pend Oreille, where the Navy maintains a submarine research center at Bayview, the Acoustic Research Detachment.

LSV-2 Cutthroat on Lake Pend Oreille

Cataldo Mission

AGPS Coordinates: 47º32’53”N, 116º21’25”W

The Mission of the Sacred Heart

In 1831 the Coeur d Alene Tribe of Indians sent successive delegations to St. Lewis to request the assistance of missionaries foretold by Chief Circling Raven. They met Pierre-Jean DeSmet in 1839 who returned with them in 1842.

In the fall of 1844, Father Nicholas Point and Brother Charles Huet selected the mission site at the mouth of the St. Joe river. Two log buildings for mission purposes were erected. In 1846, the mission on the banks of the St. Joe river was abandoned because of flooding

every spring.

Father DeSmet located an alternate site on the side of the Coeur d Alene

River from what is now known as Cataldo.

The Old Mission State Park, also known as the Mission of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the oldest standing building in Idaho. In 1850 the church was taken over by Father Antonio Ravalli who designed the current building. It was built using the wattle and daub method and was finished without using a single nail. The walls were decorated with fabric brought from the Hudson Bay Company and hand painted newspaper that Father Ravalli received in the mail. Both wooden statutes were hand carved with a knife. There are two cemeteries surrounding the property. In 1961 it was designated a National Historic Landmark and is the oldest building in the State of Idaho. In 1877 the Mission was moved to DeSmet.

Drawing by Gustavus Sohon

The Old Mission; Oldest Standing Building in Idaho

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 32’ 56.40” W 116º 21’ 79.81”

Elevation 2141

Gustavus Sohon was attached to Captain John Mullan’s party assigned to build the 1000 mile Military Road from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton, Montana.

The Mission Massacre

In 1892 about 130 nonunion miners from Gem and the Frisco mines had been escorted to the steamboat landing at Cataldo to be sent back where they came. While huddled on the dock, a group of mounted men rode up to the crest of a hill overlooking the site and without warning began firing into the group. At least 17 were wounded. When the boat finally docked at 1 a.m., only 15 men of the original 130 were left to board it. Most of the rest had decided that it was safer to walk thirty miles over the mountains to Coeur d Alene; one man went all the way to Spokane.

Big Creek

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 32’ 56.40” W 116º 21’ 79.81” Elevation 2141

Reported in 1903, it was recognized “Whenever mill “tailings” or concretes”, impregnate water flowing through producing land, the latter is reduced to a worthless condition. This is the condition of the south fork of the Coeur d Alene River from Mullan westward. The stream is, also, rendered poisonous to cattle and other species of stock. In consequence of this, a number of suits have been instituted against various mining companies. For the purpose of obviating this incalculable damage, work has recently been begun on what is to be, eventually, a large dam across the south fork of the Coeur d Alene at the mouth of Pine Creek…it is anticipated that by this means, the massive affair will retain all the “tailings” which at present flow down the river to and into Lake Coeur d Alene, for the succeeding ten or fifteen years. A History of North Idaho, p. 1050.

Big Creek was the site of the Sunshine Mine Disaster, one of the worst U.S. mining accidents, resulting in the deaths of 91 miners; as a result every miner in the U.S. now carries a “self-rescuer” (breathing apparatus made with hopcalite) which gives the miner a chance to avoid death due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Eight days after the fire started, two men emerged from the mine. They were found on the 4800 foot level of the mine near a fresh air source. All others trapped in the mine died.

Big Creek Memorial at the Sunshine Mine where 91 miners died on

May 2, 1972

Sunshine Mine remained open until February 16, 2001, producing 360 million troy ounces of silver.

1830 Fort Boise

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º49’ 37” W 117º1/2”

A lush green valley appeared in front of the early 1800’s French-Canadian fur-trappers like an oasis rising out of the dry, brown high desert. They are rumored to have exclaimed “Les Bois! Les Bois!, which is translated as “the wooded” in French.

The overland Astor Expedition are believed to be the first whites to explore the future site of the first Fort Boise located on the Boise River searching for a suitable location for a fur trading post in 1811.

John Reid, with the Astor expedition and a small party of Pacific Fur Company traders, established an outpost near the mouth of the Boise river in 1813. Colin Trader was another famous explorer on the Oregon Trail who spent his time at Fort Boise. He defended the area from Native American Indians. Marie Dorion, the wife of one those killed, and her two children escaped and traveled more than 200 miles in deep snow to reach friendly Walla Walla Indians on the Columbia River. On an 1818 map, the explorer and mapmaker David Thompson of the North West Company (NWC) called the Boise “Reids River” and his outpost “Reids Fort.”

In the fall of 1834, Thomas McKay, a veteran leader of the annual Hudson’s Bay Company Snake Country brigades, built Fort Boise, selecting the same location as Reid and Mackenzie. Although MaKay had retired in 1833, the Hudson’s bay Chief Factor John McLoughlin sent him to establish Fort Boise in 1834 to challenge the newly built American Fort Hall.

Fort Boise was managed by Francois Payette between 1835 and 1844. It was mostly staffed by Hawaiian (Owyhee) employees and soon became known for the hospitality and supplies provided to travelers and emigrants.

In 1838, Payette constructed a second Fort Boise near the confluence of the Boise River and Snake River about five miles northwest of the present town of Parma, Idaho.

In 1853, a flood damaged the fort and in 1854, the Ward massacre took place within a few miles of the Fort. Nineteen members of an Oregon-bound emigrant train were murdered by Shoshone Indians. Dispatched from the Dalles, Major Granville O. Haller found two boys had survived, one of them being William Ward, son of Alexander who described the events:

My oldest brother, Robert, who was out guarding the stock, came running into camp and said the Indians had taken one of the horses. We hitched up as soon as possible and drove out on the road where it was more open. We had hardly reached the road when we were surrounded by Indians, about two hundred in all as we were afterwards told. They immediately attacked us but our men succeeded in keeping them off until nearly sundown when the men were all killed. Then they came to the wagons where the women and children were…”

The body of Wards seventeen year old daughter was discovered. “Her body bore signs of their most brutal violence-a hot iron having been thrust into her person, doubtless while alive.” Other bodies were also discovered like Mrs. White who had her head “beaten to a perfect jelly, her body stripped of its clothing, and bore marks of brutal treatment-she had been scalped.”

The following spring General John Wool, commanding the Department of the Pacific, ordered Haller to another expedition and to return to the Ward massacre site and to find and punish the Indians responsible; Haller had with him over 150 men, including Nathan Olney who was acting as an Indian Agent. He reached the Fort Boise area on July 15^th and the next day talks were held with around 200 Indians that were gathered. During the talks it was determined that four of the participants of the Ward killing were among the present. Haller ordered their arrest and brought them before a military commission in which he reminded them that “the poor Indians cannot and should not be judged by the standard of the civilized and Christianized nations of the world”; they were tried and found guilty of the killings.

One of the Indians was shot while trying to escape but the other three were marched, on July 18, to the Ward site and the troops started to build gallows to carry out the sentence of the commission. The sentence was “read and interpreted to the Indians, who were placed in a wagon with ropes around their necks. The soldiers paraded at sundown, then the signal was given, the wagon drove from under the Indians, and they swung into eternity.”

During this expedition, besides the killing of the four Indians, the command killed and hanged several more until the number of dead Indians equaled the number of dead whites.

With the demise of the fur trade, Fort Boise was deemed indefensible and it was abandoned in 1855. Traders took stock and goods to Flathead country.

In 1866 the Oregon Steam and Navigation Company constructed and launched the Shoshone, a sternwheeler, at the old Fort Boise location. They used it to transport miners and their equipment from Olds Ferry to Boise basin, Owyhee and Hells Canyon mines.

Boise City

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º 36’ 49”W, 116º 12’ 12” Elevation 2704

On July 4, 1863, a new Fort Boise was established by the United States Army, during the middle of the Civil War. The Battle of Gettysburg had concluded a day earlier. (Brevet) Major Pinckney Lugenbeel was dispatched from Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory to head east and select the site of the newly formed Idaho Territory. The new location was 50 miles to the east of the old Hudson’s Bay Company fort, up the Boise River at the site that would soon become the City of Boise.

As noted above, the original Fort Boise was 40 miles west near Parma, down the Boise River near its confluence with the Snake River at the Oregon border. The new location was selected because it was near the intersection of the Oregon Trail with a major road connecting the Boise Basin (Idaho City) and the Owyhee (Silver City) mining areas, both of which were booming at the time. During the mid-1860’s, Idaho City was the largest city in the Northwest, and as a staging area, Fort Boise grew rapidly; Boise was incorporated as a city in 1864. The first capital of the Idaho Territory was Lewiston in north Idaho, which in 1863 was the largest community, exceeding the populations of Olympia and Seattle, Washington Territory and Portland, Oregon combined. The original territory was larger than Texas. Following the creation of Montana Territory, Boise was made the territorial capital of a much reduced Idaho in a contentious decision which overturned a district court ruling via a one vote margin in the territorial supreme court along geographic lines in 1866.

In 1884 the Idaho Territorial Legislature at Boise passed the “Idaho Test Oath” requiring elected county officials to swear that they were neither polygamists nor believers nor members of any organization encouraging such practices. Political and regional factionalism pitted the Democrats and the Mormons against the newly emerging Republicans and the Northern secessionists. When the Mormon and Democrat contingent lost control of the territory in 1882, ambitious Republicans sought to exclude a quarter of the state’s voters by passing the anti-Mormon test oath. The intent was to completely disenfranchise members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and break their political power in southern Idaho.

When the Church rescinded its support for polygamy in preparation for Utah’s admission as a state, suits were filed challenging the “Test Oath.” In Davis v. Beason, 133 U.S. 333 (1890) the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the “Test Oath,” finding: “Bigamy and polygamy are crimes by the laws of the United States, by the laws of Idaho, and by the laws of all civilized and Christian countries, and to call their advocacy a tenet of religion is to offend the common sense of mankind. A crime is nonetheless so, nor less odious, because sanctioned by what any particular sect may designate as religion.”

Although the 1893 state legislature removed the restrictions against Mormon voters, the constitutional provision was not removed until 1982.

Main Street Boise, 1911

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º 37’ 11.37” W 116º 12’ 42.26”

Elevation 2710

In August 8, 2007 Idaho Senator Larry Craig plead guilty to disorderly conduct at the Minneapolis airport regarding an attempted homosexual act.

Booking Photograph of Senator Larry Craig after arrest for disorderly conduct at the Minneapolis Airport.

The State’s largest giant sequoia can be found near St. Lukes Hospital.

Idaho State Capital

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º 37’ 04.29” W 116º 11’ 58.63”

Elevation 2710

The Boise Bench, AGPS Coordinates: N 43º 36’ 08.35” W 116º 12’ 51.60”Elevation 2749, is south of Downtown Boise and is raised in elevation approximately 60’. The bench is named such because the sudden rise in elevation gives the prominent appearance of a step, or bench. The Bench (or Benches, there are 3 actual benches throughout the Boise Valley) was created as an ancient shoreline to the old river channel. The Bench is home to the old Boise Train Depot and extensive residential neighborhoods.

Boise’s ethnic Basque community is the second largest such community in the United States after Bakersfield, California and the fifth largest in the world outside Argentina, Chile and the Basque Country in Spain and France. A large Basque festival known as Jaialdi is held once every five years (next 2010).

Basque Shepard’s Wagon

Spalding’s Mission

AGPS Coordinates: N 46º27”130”W, 116º 49’ 102”

In 1836 Henry Harmon Spalding led Presbyterian missionaries in an answer to a Nez Perce call for teacher. Spalding began his mission and school nearby, but moved here in 1838. Believing in secular as well as religious teaching, he taught the Indians irrigated farming, brought in the Northwest’s first printing press, and built saw and flour mills. Spalding left after the Whitman massacre at Walla Walla in 1847. He returned with the gold rush to work among his converts until his death in 1874.

Seattle

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º36’35” W 122º 19’ 59”

Located in the western part of Washington state on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, this city is a major seaport in the Pacific Northwest. It is named after Chief Sealth, of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. The area has been inhabited for at least 4,000 years, the Duwamish Tribe occupied at least seventeen villages in the area around Elliott Bay.

In 1851, a large party led by Luther Collins made a location on land at the mouth of the Duwamish River, they formally claimed it on September 14, 1851. Thirteen days later, members of the Collins Party on the way to their claim passed 3 scouts of the Denny Party, the group who would eventually found Seattle. Members of the Denny Party claimed land on Alki Point on September 28, 1851. After a difficult winter, most of the Denny Party relocated across Elliott Bay and founded the village of “Dewamps” or “Duwamps” on the site of present day Pioneer Square.

Arthur A. Denny and those subsequently known as the Denny Party arrived November 13, 1853. Early settlements in the area were called “New York-Alki” (“Alki” meaning “by and by” the local Chinook Jargon) and “Duwamps”. In 1853, Doc Maynard suggested that the main settlement be renamed “Seattle” an anglicized rendition of the name of Sealth, the chief of the two local tribes. The term, “Seattle” appears on official Washington Territory papers dated May 23, 1853, when the first plats for the village were filed. In 1855, nominal land settlements were established. On January 14, 1865, the Legislature of the Territorial Washington incorporated the Town of Seattle with a board of trustees managing the city.

During the early years, the road known as Yesler Way was nicknamed “Skid Road”, after the timber skidding down the hill to Henry Yesler’s sawmill. This is considered a possible origin for the term which later entered the wider American vocabulary as Skid Row. Like much of the American West, Seattle saw numerous conflicts between labor and management, as well as ethnic tensions that culminated in the anti-Chinese riots of 1885-1886. This violence was caused by unemployed whites who determined to drive the Chinese from Seattle. Martial law was declared by President Cleveland and federal troops were brought in to put down the disorder.

In 1889 the Great Seattle fire destroyed the central business district.

An economic boom and bust resulted from the Klondike Gold Rush, which ended the depression that had begun with the Panic of 1893. Seattle became a major transportation center, on July 14, 1897, the S.S. Portland docked with its famed “ton of gold”, and Seattle became the main transport and supply point for the miners in Alaska and the Yukon. The Gold Rush era culminated in the Alaksa-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, which is largely responsible for the layout of today’s University of Washington campus.

Seattle Public Market at Pike Street 1909

A shipbuilding boom in the early part of the 20^th century became massive during World War I, making Seattle somewhat a company town, the first general strike in the country. Violence during the Maritime Strike of 1934 cost Seattle much of its maritime traffic, which was rerouted to the Port of Los Angeles.

As prosperity began to return in the 1980’s, the city was stunned by the Wah Mee massacre in 1983, when thirteen people were killed in an illegal gambling club in the International District, Seattle’s Chinatown.

From 1869 until 1882, Seattle was known as the “Queen City”. Seattle’s current official nickname is the “Emerald City”, the result of a contest held in the early 1980’s.

Seattle is the birthplace of rock legend Jimi Hendrix and the music style known as “grunge,” which was made famous by local groups Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam.

Kellogg, Idaho

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º 37’ 04.29” W 116º 11’ 58.63” Elevation 2710

Legend has it that on September 4, 1885 Noah Kellogg’s donkey wandered off during the morning and while searching for the animal, he came upon a large outcropping of galena, which became the site of the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mines; those mines led to the founding of Kellogg, a city where local’s claim “This is the town founded by a jackass and inhabited by his descendants.”

Noah Kellogg is buried in the city’s cemetery.

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 31’ 00” W 116º 06’ 70” Elevation 2774

After nearly a century of bustling activity in the mines, including a history of disputes between union miners and mine owners, the Bunker Hill Mine closed in 1981, leaving thousands out of work, a history of lead contamination and other mines reduced operations as well.

The Silver Mountain Resort is a ski resort which includes Kellogg Peak, (6300 feet) and Wardner Peak, (6200 feet) and is accessed by taking the world’s longest single-cabin gondola 3.1 miles from the town of Kellogg to the lodge at Kellogg Mountain.

Gondola at the base of Silver Mountain Resort

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 32’ 98” W 116º 08’ 75” Elevation 2294

Steptoe Butte

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 13’ 42” W 117º 21’ 54.61” Elevation 2364

This site was not the site of the Steptoe Battle. It’s unique structure arises out of the surrounding Palouse farmland and provides a 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside.

Battle of Steptoe Butte

This battle was precipitated by white incursion into Indian Territory. As reported at the time “…the Cayuses, Yakimas, Nez Perces, and the Palooses excited the Oregon tribes against the invaders. Christian Indians who demurred to take up arms were taunted and called “women” and “Little dogs, that can only bark when danger threatens.” The missionaries were denounced as enemies. “They are white, like the Americans,” said the chief of the Yakimas, “and all are alike.”

“In the spring of 1858 Colonel Steptoe, at the head of a company of cavalry, arrived in Willamette to establish peace around Fort Colville. He camped in the neighborhood of the Coeur d Alenes, who, judging their tribe threatened, despite Father Joset’s protestations to the contrary, deemed the moment propitious for measuring their strength with the United States. Surprising the small command, they killed two officers and several soldiers. Inferior in numbers, the Americans retired precipitately, abandoning their baggage and cannon. The Indians, carried away with this easy victory, thought themselves invincible, and the mountains rang with their cries and threats of revenge…” The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. 1801-1873, Fr. E. Laveille, S.J, (1915), p 273.

The military reported that Colonel Edward Steptoe was attacked by about 1,000 Palouse, Walla Walla, Coeur d Alene and Spokan Indians. Nine soldiers were killed and 40 wounded. The battle occurred on the outskirts of Rosalia, Washington near Ingossman Creek and was depicted by Gustavus Sohon, in his painting of the Steptoe Battle. Sohon was enlisted and served under Colonel George Wright and Captain John Mullan.

Library of Congress

Gustavus Schon May 7^th, 1858

Heading a punitive force, Colonel George Wright left for Walla Walla the end of August and routed the united forces of the Coeru d Alenes, Spokanes, and Kalispels early in September. “Disconcerted by this prompt reprisal, the tribes were ready to make peace. They gave hostages, and, moreover, surrendered several Indians, guilty of having assassinated Americans, to be hanged…On October 29^th Father De Smet left Vancouver. Four hundred miles lay between him and the nearest mission, that of the Coeur d Alenes. At Fort Walla Walla he met the hostages taken two months previously by Colonel Wright. “Fearing they were in danger of being corrupted,” says Father Vercruysse, “Father De Smet asked that the Indians might be allowed to return with him to their country. “Impossible,” replied the Colonel, “without express authorization form General Harney.” ‘Very Good,’ said Father De Smet. ‘I will answer for it that you will not be reproved by him for acceding to my request. I know well the Spokanes, Coeur d Alenes, and the Kalispels. They are my children, and I will answer for their word.’ The Colonel no longer opposed the departure of the hostages, who set out with their Father, happy as souls escaping from limbo.” The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. 1801-1873, Fr. E. Laveille, S.J, (1915), p. 276.

Fort Taylor

AGPS Coordinates: N 46º 30’ 28.38” W 117º 59’ 45.94” Elevation 901

This Fort, constructed on the Snake River at the mouth of Tucannon Creek was built by Captain Keys as a small basalt rock fort in August 1858. The Fort was named in honor of Captain O.H.P. Taylor who was killed in the Steptoe battle retreat. Its purpose was to guard the Snake River crossing depicted by Gustavus Sohon. The Fort was only used for a few months and was abandoned October 3^rd. The Fort is now underwater as the result of a downriver dam.

Snake River at the Mouth of the Tukanon

Library of Congress

Gustavus Schon August 25^th & 26^th, 1858

Four Lakes

AGPS Coordinates: 47° 33.705′ N, 117° 35.778′ W.

The Battle of Four Lakes

September 1, 1858 General Newman S. Clarke, Commander of the Department of the Pacific, sent Colonel George Wright to deal with Confederated Tribes from Washington and Idaho in what is known as the Spokane-Coeur d Alene-Paloos War. Wright’s troops were armed with the latest weaponry and engaged members of the Confederated Tribes under command of Chief Kamiakin just north of present day Cheney and over a four day period routed the Confederated Tribes. Colonel Wright dictated the terms of peace: “I did not come into this country to ask you to make peace; I came here to fight. Now, when you are tired of war, and ask for peace, I will tell you what you must do; you must come to me with your arms, with your women and children, and everything you have, and lay them at my feet; you must put your faith in me and trust in my mercy. If you do this, I shall then dictate the terms upon which I will grant you the peace. If you do not do this, war will be made on you this year and next, and until your nation shall be exterminated.”

The monument at Four Lakes claims a force of 700 US Soldiers defeated a force of 5,000 Indians. The historical accounts dispute this and suggest that the US Force consisted of 500 Soldiers and 200 muleskinners and the forces of the Confederated Tribes numbered no more than 500. Wright ordered Major Grier to take 2 companies of cavalry and circle around the hill with orders to intercept any retreat. Wright attacked with the main force. The soldiers were allowed to press their advance to drive the Indians away from the battlefield for about 2 miles before they were recalled. The battle lasted about 4 hours, with about 50 Native Americans killed, no solders were killed. After the war, Chief Kamiakin fled to Canada.

Horse Slaughter Camp

GPS Coordinates: N 47° 41.245' W 117° 04.431'

After the Battle of Four Lakes, Colonel Wright captured about 800 horses that were being driven off by the retreating Indians near the present day city of Liberty Lake. Colonel Wright organized a board of officers with Captain Keyes to determine what to do with approximately 800 horses captured from the Indians. The horses were driven into a high enclosure and 690 were killed with a bullet behind the ear. Even as late as 1911 the bleached bones of the slaughtered horses could be seen along the bank of the Spokane River. Historically, this incident had a huge impact on the Indian perception of their enemy. They saw an enemy that was capable of an act that no Indian chief could ever do.

Gustavus Sohon, Horse-Slaughter Camp on the Spokane River

Sept 8^th, 9^th, 10^th, 1858

Hangman Creek

AGPS Coordinates: 45º51’36” W 121º29’51”

Along Latah Creek (Fish in the native tongue) is the site of the hanging of 7-18 Indians by Colonel George Wright. On September 24, 1858 Qualchan rode into his camp, not knowing his father was being held hostage for his arrest. Captain Keyes described his arrival: “I was standing in front of Colonel Wright’s tent and I saw issuing out of a canyon about two hundred yards from me two Indian braves and a handsome squaw...They all had on a great deal of scarlet, and the squaw sported two ornamental scarves, passing from the right shoulder under the left arm…I pulled aside the flap of the tent, remarking, as I did so: “Colonel Wright, we have distinguished strangers here.” In his official report Colonel Wright related: “Qual-chew came to me at 9 this morning, at 9 ¼ he was hung.”

Altogether about 27 Indians were hanged at the different points along Hangman Creek. A roadometer was used as scaffold for most of the hangings. A roadometer was a two wheeled wagon rigged with an attachment that could gauge the distance traveled. Of the total number of Indians thus executed not one showed the white feather (cowardice). Some did not wait for the roadometer to be moved from under them, but leaped off as soon as the noose was adjusted around their necks. The next day Qualchan’s father broke away from the army march on a horse, even though he was handcuffed and was shot to death.

Drive to Waverly City south and east of Spokane from the tavern on main street go north and west on Spangle/Waverly road 3-4 miles to North Kentucky Trails Road, turn right and proceed until you come to Hangman

Creek, look on the left for the monument.

Counseling the Indians for peace, Father De Smet brokered a treaty. “The Spokanes, Yakimas, Palooses, Okinagans, and the Chaudieres promised to accept the Government’s conditions. On April 16, 1859, the missionary started for Vancouver accompanied by nine Indian chefs, delegated by their respective tribes to sign a treaty of peace with the agents of the Republic. Alone and unarmed, a Jesuit priest had been able to do more to restore peace in the country than the American troops. The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. 1801-1873, Fr. E. Laveille, S.J, (1915), p 278.

Returning east, Father De Smet missed his time in the mountains: “Everywhere the missionary was well received. Statesmen invited him to their tables; one day he dined at the Belgian Legation with the French, Spanish, and Russian ambassadors. All the ambassadors were resplendent with their orders. “I was arrayed in a worn frock-coat lacking two buttons. Nevertheless, it passed off very pleasantly and I held my own in this distinguished gathering. But I would have been more at my ease seated on the ground in the midst of my Indians, listening to their badinage, while eating with relish a buffalo steak or a fat roast dog.” The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. 1801-1873, Fr. E. Laveille, S.J, (1915), p 302.

Bonners Ferry

AGPS Coordinates: N 46º, W 115º ”

In 1859 Chief Abraham of the Kootenai Tribe entertained members of the U.S. British Boundary Commission and furnished them with guides in setting the International boundary eventually established along the 49 Parallel.

In a letter to the Father General, Father De Smet wrote of the Kootenais:

Of all the Indian tribes, the Kootenais were the most interesting. In this tribe, evangelical, fraternity, simplicity, innocence, and peace reign. Their honesty is so well known that a merchant can absent himself for a week at a time and leave his store open. During his absence the Indians enter, take what they want, and upon the proprietor’s return he is faithfully paid. One of the storekeepers assured me that he had never missed the value of a pin. The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. 1801-1873, Apostle of the Rocky Mountains, Fr. E. Laveille, S.J.

Father De Smet was fully aware of the emigrant invasion and its impact on this country:

In 1862 the discovery of gold in Idaho produced the same horrors and disorders in the Kootenais country, which the missionaries had evangelized. One man had known for twenty years of the gold buried in the mountains, and that man was Father De Smet. He could have become famous, and enriched his Society; but he preferred to delay the discovery of gold, fearing it would mean ruin to the missions. He locked the momentous secret in his breast and also swore the Indians to secrecy, predicting to them that if they revealed it they would be dispossessed of their lands. The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. 1801-1873, Fr. E. Laveille, S.J, (1915), p. 320.

With the discovery of the Wild Horse mines in British Columbia in1863, this area provided direct route to the mines by way of the Wild Horse Trail. The resulting rush brought Edwin L. Bonner, who was in the mercantile business in Walla Walla to this future town site. Bonner bought the property on each side of the Kootenai River for a ferry and trading post from Chief Abraham. John Walton became the first ferry operator. Edwin Bonner died in Missoula Montana on July 10, 1902.

In 1875 the ferry and trading post were leased by Richard Fry, the town Bonners Ferry was originally called “Fry”. Richard Fry became the first postmaster. The town eventually became known as Bonnerport. William Eaton platted an adjoining town site which was named Eatonville. In 1899 the two sites were joined as Bonners Ferry.

In 1882 the Northern Pacific was completed through Bonners Ferry and in 1892 the Great Northern tracks were completed.

In 1892 a colony of Chinese settled on the outskirts of Bonners Ferry. In June, 200 citizens of Bonners Ferry elected to enforce the alien labor law and ordered the Chinese to leave within 2 hours. 50 Chinese were herded into 2 box cars and transported out of town. History of North Idaho, p. 797.

A power plant was built at Moyie Falls by J.F. Cook.

Boundary County Stump Farm Family and their present home 1939

Library of Congress

Canal Gulch

AGPS Coordinates: N 46º29’36”, W 115º 47’ 56”

City of Pierce

W.E. Bassett first discovered gold in Idaho at this location. E.D. Pierce led 12 prospectors, including Bassett from Walla Walla in August in violation of the treaty with the Nez Perce. After news of the strike spread, about 60 men came in and wintered nearby in spite of snow and Indians. The following July the county cast the largest vote in Washington Territory.

Pierce Territorial Courthouse and First Probate Judge David Elliot, a greenhorn from the east became harassed by the town bully who would make him dance by shooting at his feet. Elliot bought two guns and practiced until he was ready for another dance. When accosted by the bully, he pulled his guns and killed him. He was fined $5.00 and forfeited his guns for the shooting. The miners took up a collection and bought him two new pistols. The Bonanza Trail, Muriel Sibell Wolle, p 222.

In 1885 Near Pierce, 5 Chinese miners were charged with hacking David M. Frazer, owner of the Frazer trading post to death. They were being taken from Pierce to Murray to face trial at the county seat when they met a large group of armed masked men. The deputy was forced to give up the prisoners and return to Pierce. The Chinese were hanged by these vigilantes on September 18, 1885.

City of Murray

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 37’38”, W 115º 51’ 29.65” Elevation 2781

Murray was described as: “…composed of hideous half-mile long street of huts, shanties, and tents, with three or four cross-streets that run against the steep slopes after a few rods progress…a more unattractive place than Murray I have seldom seen. The trees have been cleared away, leaving a bare gulch into which the sun pours for sixteen hours a day with a fervor which seems to be designed by nature to make up for the coolness of the short July nights, when fires are needed. Stumps and half charred logs encumber the streets, and serve as seats for the inhabitants…Every second building is a drinking saloon…the town was full of men out of employment and out of money who hung about the saloon and around the camp in all styles of profanity known to miners vocabulary. Nevertheless, gold was being shipped out every day by Wells Fargo Co. Express and new discoveries are constantly reported. (Century Magazine, Oct. 1884) The Bonanza Trail, Muriel Sibell Wolle,

More than 10,000 people had traveled to the gold fields in hopes of cashing in on the gold rush.

Molly Burdan joined the gold rush to Murray. On her way over Thompson Pass in the winter of 1884, she saved the life of a stranded woman. She set up business in town doing pleasure under the name Molly Burdan. Her homeland accent confused her listeners who called her Molly B’Damn. She received Florence Nightingale-like status when she nursed many a miner during a smallpox epidemic, only to die of tuberculosis in 1888 at the age of 35.

She and others from this era are buried in the Murray Cemetery located on Kings Pass Road overlooking the historic town.

AGPS coordinates: N 47º 37’ 25.35” W 115º 51’ 47.52”

Elevation 2799

Lewiston

AGPS coordinates: N 46º 25’ 00” W 117º 01’ 04”

The first people of European ancestry to visit the Lewiston area were members of the David Thompson expedition of 1803. Thompson was looking to establish fur trading posts for the Hudson’s Bay Company of British North American (now Canada). Thompson established the first white settlement in Idaho, MacKenzie’s Post. But it soon failed as the local Nez Perce tribe’s men considered trapping to be women’s work, the tribe was migratory and apparently the women thought they already had enough to do. This was followed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in October, 1805. At the future town site they encountered settlements of the native Nez Perce tribe. Lewis and Clark passed through the valley on the return trip form the Pacific in 1806 also.

Lewiston was established in 1861 in the wake of a gold rush which began the previous year near Pierce, northeast of Lewiston.

It was reported that Henry Plummer operated out of Lewiston. He established two roadhouses called “shebangs”, one between Lewiston and Oro Fino and one on the road to Walla Walla. Plummer would identify pack horses that were loaded with gold and make out a fake bill of sale. He would send the bill of sale ahead of the pack train to the roadhouse and the operator would confront the prospector with the pack animal waving the fake bill of sale, taking the animal and goods at gunpoint. Plummer was hung in Bannock, Montana in 1864. The Bonanza Trail, Muriel Sibell Wolle.

The first newspaper in present day Idaho, The Lewiston Tribune, began publication in the city in 1862. In 1863 Lewiston became the capital of the newly-created Idaho Territory. A resolution to have the capital moved from Lewiston to Boise was passed by the Idaho Territorial Legislature on .December 7, 1864, and the move was made in 1865. According to legend the move was very unpopular in northern Idaho, so government officials secretly took the territorial seal from Lewiston and immediately departed for Boise to avoid the public outrage that was anticipated. Caleb Lyon and the territorial secretary secretly took the territorial seal, archives and treasury and fled from Lewiston, their territorial capital.. Lyon went down river to Portland, Oregaon, a trip marked by the alleged theft of the treasury from his steamship cabin.

Lewiston is the southern gateway to Hells Canyon, the deepest gorge in the United States. In 1887 Chinese miners working in Hells Canyon at Deep Creek area on the Snake River, employed by the Sam Yup Company of San Francisco washed out “great quantities of gold.” . Hells Canyon, p. 79.

Hells Canyon, Central Idaho

Three cowboys murdered a number of Chinese at two different locations, one body was found at Log Cabin Island near Lewiston. The head and one arm had been chopped off, wrapped in a coat and tied to the body at the waist. . Hells Canyon, p. 81. United States Commissioner, J. K. Vincent reported finding the body of Chea-Yow, “…about 5 feet 7 or 8 inches tall; had been shot near backbone; head off, as though chopped; left arm off between elbow and shoulder, both arm and head in coat which was fastened to body held there by a belt around his waist. He was lodged in a huge drift pile…”The body was found at Lower Granite Dam site. Outlaws of the Pacific Northwest, p 135. Reportedly 34 Chinamen were murdered in the Snake River Canyon and their bodies thrown in the river. p. 143.

The Sam Yup Company hired US Commissioner Joseph K. Vincent to investigate. Vincent located a group of “drifters” near Douglas Cabin. Vincent estimated there were 30 men in the gang which was headed by Canfield, Evans and La Rue. . Hells Canyon, p. 83.

On September 8, 1898 the first passenger train entered Lewiston.

The confluence of the Clearwater and the Snake rivers is also the lowest point in Idaho, at 738 feet above sea level and Idaho’s only seaport.

The Lewiston grade was built in 1917, called the “Spiral.” A turn of the century experience on this highway is quoted in a History of North Idaho (p. 582):

Notable among these old highways is the road now in use from Genesee via Uniontown, down the Snake river breaks to Lewiston, where a descent is made from an elevation of over 2,500 feet to an elevation of 600 feet in about four miles. Citizens of Genesee will remember a ride taken over this road a few months ago by two of their number who had recently arrived from an eastern state and settled in their midst. Before starting they were advised by some of their friends who knew the road, to be very good to the driver as there were some steep hills to descend and they would want him to drive slowly. The “friends” had been specific in their advice and consequently when the party started the newcomers had with them two quarts of whiskey with which they at once began to treat the driver. The driver appreciated this unusual kindness, became very much devoted to the bottles and by the time they had reached the breaks was in condition to face any danger and take any risk. Before commencing the descent he took a “long pull” at the stimulants, rose in his seat, and, to the consternation of his passengers, swung the whip across the backs of his horses, gave a wild “whoop” and plunged down the canyon road at break-neck speed. No amount of entreaty or persuasion could induce him to slacken speed. Dangerous curves were rounded in a flash, the hack bounding over rocks and swinging dangerously close to the edge of the almost perpendicular walls falling down from the roadbed; steep descents and ascents were made with the same reckless speed and there was not a moment’s pause until the ferry over the Clearwater river was reached at the bottom. The passengers clung furiously to the sides of the hack allowing their hats and parcels to sail away into the air and roll down the rocky canyon sides hundreds of feet to the bottom. In the beginning they rent the air with yells of terror and apprehension but the latter half of the wild ride was taken in death-like silence and when the river level was reached they had to be assisted from the wagon. Once more finding themselves on terra firma they refused to accompany their driver further but found other conveyances into Lewiston, returning eventually to Genesee by another road.

ighway” the twisty road (64 curves) was the primary route north for 62 years.

Lewiston Grade July 1941

The Presto Log was invented in Lewiston in 1930.

Lewiston had a popular Northwest League professional baseball franchise from 1952-74. The Lewiston Broncos featured Reggie Jackson who played with the franchise in 1966.

Oro Fino

AGPS Coordinates: N 46.47935 and W -116.25514

Orofino

In 1861 the commercial center of Idaho’s earliest gold camp flourished for more than a year. Abraham Lincoln, concerned with the South controlling gold mines around Oro Fino (Fine Gold in Italian) moved to partition off the area combining it with part of the Dakota Territory and calling it Idaho, with the territorial capital in Lewiston.

City of Rathdrum

AGPS Coordinates: 47.808457ºN 116.89241ºW

Rathdrum

Located on what the Indians called the ”Great Road of the Flatheads”, the Hudson Bay, Pacific Fur Companies and Jesuit missionaries traversed the Rathdrum Prairie in the 1800’s.

A trapper named Conners built a structure at the present site of Rathdrum in 1861 who sold his squatters rights to Frederick Post, the founder of Post Falls. In 1871 Post traveled to Lewiston at the U.S. Land Office to file his claim. He transferred his claim to Charles Wesley Wood who married Post’s daughter and established a pony mail station at Westwood, the original name for Rathdrum. History of North Idaho, p. 781. Rathdrum was built at the foot of Rathdrum Mountain, elevation 4070 and previously known as Kootenai Mountain and Storm King.

One of the oldest towns in North Idaho, Rathdrum was designated as the original county seat for Kootenai County in 1881 (Kootenai County included Bonner County at that time). The Northern Pacific railroad was established in 1882, allowing ore from the silver valley to be shipped for processing. The original Kootenai County jail was built in 1892 at the cost of $2,500. The County seat was moved to Coeur d Alene in 1908.

The post office notified officials that Idaho already had a city named “Westwood”, the postmaster, Zach Lewis asked M.M. Crowley, ex president of the Traders Nation Bank who was living at Spokane Bridge and suggested an alternative name, including the name of his home town in Ireland, “Rathdroma”.

In 1882, Henry Reiniger from Colville, Washington, built a brewery on Fish Creek, one-half mile from town at a cost of about $5,000. History of North Idaho, p. 782.

In 1881, M.D. Wright purchased 60 acres from C.W. Wood and established a general store. In 1886 Wright secured the tie contract from the Northern Pacific Railroad for the branch road from Hauser Junction to Coeur d Alene. Each year he furnished more than 150,000 ties for about 26 cents apiece, earning more than $100,000.00.

In 1883 Frederick Post established a gravity water system from Spring Branch just north of town and donated land for a Presbyterian Church in Rathdrum.

Rathdrum was a supply point for the Coeur d Alene mining district. Miners, including Wyatt Earp would leave the Northern Pacific train at Rathdrum, take a stage to Coeur d Alene and the steamboat up the

Coeur d Alene River to the Old Mission, continuing on the Mullan Road to the mines, originally located in Eagle and Kellogg.

On October 27, 1884, 55 buildings and six city blocks burnt in Rathdrum. The fire broke out in an unoccupied building at the rear of Rector’s drug store of incendiary origin.

On May 29, 1890 a second fire started in a restaurant adjacent to Bradley & Butler’s Saloon.

The town rebuilt only to suffer another fire on August 29^th and 30^th, 1924 where 30 stores and homes were destroyed in the downtown area.

In 1886 D.C. Corbin built a branch line from the Northern Pacific main line at Hauser Junction to Coeur d Alene, bypassing Rathdrum.

On August 27, 1895 Rathdrum received its first telephone lines from Coeur d Alene.

Rathdrum boasts the oldest brick church in the State, Stanislaus Church which was built in 1901.

Rathdrum has one of the oldest cemeteries in the state, Pinegrove Cemetery holds the oldest known burial was Harry Nicholis in November 1886. AGPS Coordinates: N 47° 49’ 06” W 116° 52’ 21”

While excavating to pave the driveway at the Rathdrum Lion’s Club, east of the cemetery, remains of Chinese railroad workers were unearthed, resulting in a small burial plot at the west end of its parking lot. An apocryphal story is told about past Mayor Stub Meyer who was asked to remove several Chinese graves from the white cemetery. Meyer took the city backhoe and relocated the headstones, leaving the graves undisturbed and no one any wiser as to the location of the remains.

Mullan Tree

AGPS Coordinates: N 47° 37.215 W 116° 31.163

The Mullan Road

While constructing the Military Road, Captain John Mullan issued extra molasses, ham, whisky, flour, and pickles at this site 6 ½ miles east of Wolf’s Lodge Prairie and 196 miles from Walla Walla. At this site he inscribed in a tree: “MR July 4, 1861.”

While surveying for the road, Mullan reported “…the existence of an atmospheric river of heat, varying in breath from one to a hundred miles, giving mild winters in the Rocky Mountains.” The Indians called this River of Heat “Schnook winds.” After participating in the Battle of Four Lakes, and the Spokan Plain, he built the 1000 mile Military Road form Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton , Montana.

Congress appropriated $100,000 for the Mullan Road’s construction in 1859. Mullan left the Dalles, Oregon Territory May 15, 1859 with 100 men of the 3^rd Artillery and Gustavus Sohon, a guide, interpreter and artist. In 6 months Mullan and his men brought the road 258 miles From Fort Walla to the winter headquarters at Cantonnment Stevens (named after Isaac Stevens, the Governor of the Washington Territory) near present De Borgia, Montana. Mullan reached Fort Benton in September 1860.

On June 4, 1884, Captain John Mullan wrote from Washington D.C to the editor of the Eagle Newspaper.:

It is exceedingly gratifying to me to view and read of the developments that are now taking place in your section of the country, which for so many of the difficulties of opening up so wild a region of our mountain system, and particularly when they are set forth in a sprightly journal like the Eagle, right in the heart of such development. I am not at All surprised at the discovery of numerous rich gold deposits in your mountains, because both on the waters of the St. Joseph and Coeur d Alene, when there many years ago, I frequently noticed vast masses of quartz strewing the ground, particularly on the St. Joseph river, and wide veins of quartz projecting at numerous points along the line of my road along the Coeur d Alene, all of which indicated the presence of gold. Nay, more, I now recall quite vividly one of my herders and hunters, a man by the name of Moise, a French-Canadian (the son- in-law of Louis Brown, then living at Frenchtown, a little village about fifteen miles below Missoula) coming into camp one day with a handful of coarse gold which he said he had found on the headwaters of the north fork of the Coeur d Alene while out hunting for our expedition. This gold was so pure, so heavy and so free from quartz or matrix rock and weighing several ounces that it attracted not only a great deal of attention, but some degree of surprise at the time. And when he said he had found it his statement was scarcely credited by anyone then in our camp, because it was believed that he had traded for this gold with some parties passing up and down from the Frazier river mines. This was in 58-9…I am now frank to say that I did nothing to encourage its discovery at that time, for I feared that any rich discovery would lead to a general stampede of my men from my own expedition and thus destroy the probable consummation of my work during the time within which I desired to complete the same. I then regarded it as of the first importance to myself and to the public to open a base line from the plains of the Spokane on the west to the plains of the Missouri on the east, from which other lines could be subsequently opened and by means of which the correct geography of the country could be delineated.

My object at that time and the object of those whose views I was in the field to execute was not so much to discover gold as it was for the purpose of ascertaining whether there was a practical railroad route through the valleys and if there existed any practicable pass in the main range of the Rocky mountains through which, in connection with proper approaches thereto, we could carry a wagon road, to be followed by a railroad line and I did not hesitate to make all other considerations secondary or subordinate thereto, believing then, and knowing now, that if a railroad line was projected and competed through the valleys and the passes of the Rocky mountains, between the 45^th and the 48^th parallels of latitude, that all other developments would necessarily and naturally soon follow.

I am therefore, not surprised to-day to see, as I saw last September when going out to assist in driving the last spike on the N.P. railway, countless herds of stock grazing in perfect security from Indians upon the broad plains of the Upper Missouri and the Yellowstone and the entire road dotted with towns and villages…. (History of North Idaho, p. 983-4)

General William T. Sherman and General Phillip H. Sheridan traveled the Mullan road during inspection tours of the Northwest in 1877. Sherman and Sheridan learned from the operator of the Bitterroot Ferry that only one wagon had been over the road in 1876.

Nez Perce Trail

AGPS Coordinates N 45º44’3” W 114º33’32”.

Nez Perce Trail is an old Indian trail that connected Elk City with mines in Montana when Idaho’s gold rush spread there in 1862.

Following a route developed by Nez Perce buffalo hunters, a host of miners and packers ascended a series of ridges overlooking the deep Salmon and Clearwater River canyons on their way to new gold fields. Long after local Indians and miners ceased to travel there, a single-lane forest road was constructed near that traditional Nez Perce thorough-fare in 1934.

Spokan

AGPS Coordinates: Nº 47’ 39’ 32” W 117º 25’ 30”

Named after the Spokane tribe who are believed to be direct descendants of the original hunter-gathers that settled in the region. The Indian name means, “Children of the Sun.” When asked by early white explorers, the tribe said their ancestors came from “Up North.”

The Native American leader, Chief Spokane Garry was born in 1811 in the Marian Indian village where the Little Spokane River emptied into the Spokane River. The son of Chief Ileum Spokane of the Middle plains Spokane Indian Tribe. Garry and two of his brothers were chosen to be taught at the Anglican Mission School in Winnipeg, Canada, by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1825. When he arrived there, custom dictated that he receive a new respected name. Spokane Garry was the chosen name which remained until his death in 1892. He married the daughter of another tribal chief whom he named Lucy.

In 1888 white men took Spokane Gary’s land. After a long legal battle, the property was awarded to the whites with no compensation. Garry believed there was good in all men, and said: “Inside us humans there is the same colored blood, so we should treat each other equally under this God of ours.” On January 14, 1892, Chief Spokane Garry died, homeless and penniless.

David Thompson explored the Spokane area establishing the Spokane House for the North West Company, Columbia Department in 1810. This trading post was the first long term European settlement in Washington and center of the fur trade between the Rockies and the Cascades for sixteen years. After establishing the Kulyspell House and Saleesh House in Idaho and Montana, Thompson sent Jacques Raphael Finlay and Finan McDonald to the Spokane River to build the Spokane House.

The Spokane House was in operation from 1810 to 1826. When the Hudson’s Bay Company absorbed the North West Company in 1821, operations at Spokane House eventually shifted to Fort Colville.

Joint American-British occupation of the Oregon Country commenced with the Treaty of 1818. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 established the boundary at the 46^th Parallel. The first American settlers, squatters, J.J. Downing and S.R. Scranton, built a cabin and established a claim at Spokane Falls in 1871. Together they built a small sawmill on a claim near the south bank of the Spokane Falls. James N. Glover and Jasper Matheney, Oregonians passing through the region in 1873, recognized the value of the Spokane River and falls. They purchased the claims of 160 acres and the sawmill from Downing and Scranton for a total of $4,000. Glover and Matheney knew that the Northern Pacific Railroad Company received a government charter to build a main line across this northern route. Glover later became known as the “Father of Spokane.”

October 21, 1880, Camp Spokane was established by the U.S. Army troops under Lt. Col Henry Clay Merriam at a location 56 miles northwest of Spokane at the junction of the Columbia and Spokane Rivers.

By 1881, the Northern Pacific Railway was completed, bringing major European settlement to the area. The city of Spokan Falls (the “e” was added in 1883 and “Falls” dropped in 1891) was officially incorporated as a city of about 1,000 residents in 1881. By 1910 the population hit 104,000; the building of the Northern Pacific allowed Spokane to eclipse Walla Walla as the commercial center of the Inland Northwest.

Gustavus Sohon

Great Falls of the Spokane River, 30 Miles below

Lake Coeur d Alene, 1858

Spokane’s growth continued until August 4, 1889 when a fire, now known as “The Great Fire,” destroyed the city’s downtown commercial district. Finding no water pressure to fight the fire, firefighters began demolishing buildings with dynamite. The fire continued despite this effort as the flames leaped over the cleared spaces and created their own firestorm. 32 blocks of Spokane’s downtown were destroyed and one person killed.

Three years after the fire, in 1892, James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway arrived in the newly created township of Hillyard (Annexed by Spokane in 1924), the chosen site for Hill’s rail yards, machine shops and roundhouse because of the area’s flat ground.

In 1897 About 250 people in the state of Washington received personal invitations from Spokane Sheriff G.A. Cole to attend the execution by hanging of George Webster on March 20, 1900, between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. The sheriff had compiled the list himself and made sure the printed invitation stated “Not Transferable.” The two Spokane County courts and most of the offices were closed for the day. George Webster would be the first white man to be hanged in Spokane County. Colonel George Wright had hanged quite a few Indians, and a Chinese man was hanged for murdering his friend, but Webster was the first white. He had been convicted almost three years earlier of the first-degree murder of a woman, Lise Aspland, a farmers wife, at Cheney on May 8, 1897.

Born May 3, 1903, Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby is one of the most popular and celebrated singers and film artists in US history made Spokane his home in 1906. His childhood home now serves as Gonzaga University’s Alumni Association office.

Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby was born May 3, 1903 and was one of the most popular and celebrated singers and film artists in US history. His family made Spokane their home in 1906. His childhood home now serves as Gonzaga University’s Alumni Association office. Gonzaga’s Law Library was constructed and dedicated as a memorial to Bing Crosby.

In 1909 in Spokane the Free Speech riot erupted where about 400 IWW (Wobbles) spent months in jail for protesting a Spokane City ordinance banning speaking in streets.

On December 18, 1915 the Division Street Bridge collapsed, sending two trolley cars into the Spokane River, killing five men and injuring 12. Hundreds of homes lost electricity, gas or water because the bridge contained the lines to the north side of the river.

In 1916 Fathers Day was initiated in Spokane, supported by women’s groups and William Jennings Bryan. President Wilson pressed a button in Washington D.C. to open the Spokane Celebration.

In 1914 the Davenport Hotel was constructed. Dashiell Hammett worked for Pinkerton Agency out of Spokane and wrote the Maltese Falcon, the book was set at the Davenport Hotel.

Post Falls, Idaho

AGPS Coordinates: Nº 47’ 42” W 116º 57’ 85”

Treaty Rock

Frederick Post, a German emigrant came from Illinois to North Idaho in 1871. Post was born near Herborn, Hesse-Nassau, Germany on September 16, 1821 and married Margaret Hild in 1848.

Post and his family settled in Kendall County, Illinois where he put his millwright skills to use by patenting a riding scraper and a pulverizing land roller. He set up a grist mill and lumber mill in the area and completed a dam on the Fox River. When the railroad relocated, he sold his interests and headed to San Francisco and Portland. In 1871 he brought equipment for a lumber mill and a grist mill overland to the inland northwest.

He purchased a mill site and 200 acres on the Spokane River from Chief Moses Seltice. The conveyance was recorded on a pictograph on a granite rock which is now a city park and bears the inscription “June 1, 1871, Frederick Post.” (See Treaty Rock). He settled and built homes in three areas that later became the towns of Rathdrum, Spokane and Post Falls.

Post Falls before the Dam

One of his daughters, Mary, married Charles Wesley Wood, an early pioneer of Rathdrum, which later became the County seat of Kootenai County.

Theodore Roosevelt said of the man: “He is a man who has done things.”

Post dammed the Spokane River at the falls that bears his name, and then was forced to buy the land again from the government pursuant to a special act of congress.

The town was incorporated in 1891 but it took a special act of the legislature to legalize the city as a corporation in 1901.

In 1892 Post leased his mill to Fred Bish. Bish and a companion were working on a boom of logs when the fastenings broke and both men went over the falls. Both lost their lives.

At the lower falls (Spokane Falls) he purchased 40 acres from James Glover which included Spokane Falls and platted what is now know as “Post Addition.” He erected the first flour mill in Spokane and did business there for 10 years. He sold the property for $97,300.00 and again moved to Post Falls and continued a small sawmill business. Post built a three story hotel in Post Falls, called the Mount Vernon. He sold his water rights along the Spokane River, including the three channels of the Spokane River to Spokane mine owners who later formed the Washington water Power Company, now Avista Inc.

Post sold his mill in 1894 to the Spokane and Idaho Lumber Company.

Frederick Post leaves his name and those of his brothers, William and Henry on streets in Post Falls. The Post family burial plot was later donated to the city of Post Falls and remains at the Evergreen Cemetery.

Post died on his 60^th Wedding anniversary in 1908.

Nez Perce War

AGPS Coordinates:

After the Clearwater battle on the heights above here, July 11-12, 1877, the Indians crossed the Lolo Trail to Montana.

Advancing northward along the high ground with 600 troops and artillery, General O. O. Howard found the Indian camp on the flat across the river. But 24 brave Indians blocked his advance and 100 more pinned him in rifle pits for a day. Then the Indians, camp and all, moved slowly northward past Kamiah, while Howard followed without fighting. There the Indians decided to move east away from the troops.

Chief Joseph who was known as In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat (Thunder coming up from the water over the land) formally surrendered to General Nelson Appleton Miles on October 5, 1877 in the Bear Paw Mountains of the Montana Territory, less than 40 miles south of Canada in place close to the present-day Chinook in Blaine County.

Chief Joseph 1901

Upon his surrender, Joseph reportedly said:

Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Loosing Glass is dead, Too-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little c children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.

Chief Joseph died in September 1904 and was buried in Nespelem, Washington, the site where many of his tribe’s members still live. He is quoted with saying: “It does not require many words to speak the truth.”

Inkom, Idaho

AGPS Coordinates: 42º40’14” N 112º 14’ 52” W

Idaho’s First Railroad,

In 1877 Construction of this railroad was taken over by Jay Gould when the Utah Northern Railway stopped at Franklin on the Idaho-Utah border. Trains were passing here the next summer, and the rails reached Montana in 1880. In 1870 about 4,300 Chinese lived in Idaho, more than 25% of the total state population. They worked in gold mines, constructed railways and were also packers, cooks, merchants and gardeners. By 1890 the Chinese population had declined to 1,500 due partially to anti-Chinese sentiment and restrictive laws, particularly the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which prohibited Chinese from filing claims or owning mines. The act was not repealed until 1943.

Thompson Pass

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º34’38” W 115º43’3”

Thompson Pass is at the top of Highway 471 (Prospect Creek Rd.) at the Montana/Idaho border. It is approximately 21 miles to the top of the pass, which sits at an elevation of about 6812’. Thompson Falls, Thompson River and Thompson Pass are named for Welsh geographer David Thompson, who traveled in the area in the early 1800’s on behalf of the Northwest Fur Company. In 1809 he constructed the Saleesh House trading pose and fort on the Clark Fork River in the vicinity of today’s Thompson Falls; the post was moved upriver in 1827.

Steamboat navigation on the Clark Fork began in 1865, with the head of navigation at Shannonville, three miles below Thompson Falls on the Clark Fork River. After the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1883, Shannonville declined and the towns of Belknap and Thompson Falls replaced it. Both these towns provided access to the gold strikes in the Coeur d Alene Mountains of Idaho.

Thompson Falls was the main outfitting point for prospectors and miners heading into Idaho from the Montana side because it had the advantage of having a railroad station (Northern Pacific Railroad) about 30 miles from the gold discovery at Eagle City and Murray. In 1883-84 10,000 men spent the winter in tents and shacks waiting to head over the range as soon as the weather allowed. The trails to Murray, Idaho were converted to rough wagon roads connecting Thompson Falls with Murray, Idaho.

The road to Prospect Creek was built in 1883-84 as a toll road to the foot of the Montana-Idaho divide (with a foot trail the rest of the way).

Besides the roads, or more properly “trails, a diversion ditch approximately four feet wide by four feet deep was dug by Chinese laborers in 1883 to transport water across the state line from Blossom Lake over Thompson Pass to mining operations in Murray, Idaho. It was apparently never used, as the dam at the mouth of Blossom Lake broke in 1887.

In the History of North Idaho, it is reported

…Following the instillation of a suitable plant, several hundred men will doubtless be employed in sifting gold from the North Fork Country. For the operation of this elevator, water is secured from the old Coeur d Alene Company’s pipe line from Raven; twenty-two inches in diameter and with a pressure of 112 pounds to the square inch at the elevator. Water is supplied to this pipe from a flume extending to Twin Lakes, east of the Montana divide, in Montana. As they are at a greater altitude than the backbone of the divide the water can be conveyed from the lakes into Idaho and used on Prichard Creek. Day and night several men are employed at the elevator, of whom S.S. Catching is foreman.” P. 1061.

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Wyatt Earp arrives in Eagle City

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º41’ 44” W 116º21’ 11”

In January 30, 1884 Wyatt Earp arrived in northern Idaho with Sadie and his brother Jim for the short-lived Coeur d Alene rush. The Earp’s landed in the snowy little town of Eagle City, a flat spot where a small creek ran into Eagle Gulch. Newly thrown-up tents and freshly hewn log cabins filled quickly with miners who arrived almost daily. The Earp’s purchased a round circus tent, 45 feet high and 50 feet in diameter, for $2,250 and started a dance hall. Later, they opened the White Elephant Saloon, which as advertisement in the Coeur d Alene Weekly called: “The largest and finest saloon in the Coeur d Alenes.”

Eagle Idaho, adjacent to Eagle Creek

Shoshone County, 2009

A.J. Pritchard discovered gold in the region in the fall of 1882 and set about filing claims to tie up much of the land. Local mining law dictated it illegal to file by proxy for someone living outside the region, which Prichard had done. The Earp’s, along with partners Danny Ferguson, John Hardy, Jack Enright and Alfred Holman formed their own land syndicate and set about locating claims and challenging Pritchard’s right to tie up extensive holding. Prichard sued and won on a mining lot he claimed the Earp’s jumped. William S. Payne sued Earp and associates over possession of some town land in Eagle, alleging that two men armed with revolvers had forcibly taken possession of the land. Payne received a $25 judgment, which the judge trebled, and regained possession of the land. Oddly, Payne showed up in another legal suit siding with Wyatt. The Earp's also won a suit for a mining claim they had allegedly jumped.

The town of Eagle was on land claimed by both Shoshone and Kootenai counties and the legislature had not yet determined the proper authority. Shoshone County stationed both the sheriff and a deputy in Eagle City. On January 31^st, 1884 in the Acion Saloon an impromptu election was held, Wyatt Earp was elected deputy sheriff of Kootenai County.

Burke

AGPS Coordinates: 47º31’13”N, 115º49’13”W

Burke Canyon

Burke is one of the oldest towns in the Coeur d Alene’s, out of which the Hecla, Tiger Poorman and Hercules mines were developed in the 1880’s.

On June 13, 1885 a meeting of Canyon Creek miners voted for the town to be named Burke. One vote was cast for the name Onealville. After the meeting, “…Mr. Burke appeared and thanked those present for the honor and…extended courtesies of a more substantial character to the miners.” History of North Idaho, p. 1044.

Burke was the only mining town known that ever secured a railroad before it had a wagon road.

Early Sanitary Plan on Canyon Creek in Burke Canyon

Note outhouses located above the creek,

Also locally known as “Shit Creek”

Lead and silver strikes attracted a railroad to Burke. Hundreds of miners lived in this 300’ canyon. In 1888, S.S. Glidden’s Tiger Hotel had to be built over, rather than beside Canyon Creek. Railroad tracks and Burke’s only road had to run through his hotel. When a second railroad arrived in 1890, its tracks had to be laid in Burke’s only street. No other hotel had two railroads, a street and stream running through it.

In 1892 mine owners closed the mines to force lower railroad rates. By April the railroads had come around, but now the owners announced they would need two thousand men to open the mines and former employees would be given preference. But they added an hour to the shift; the men could have Sunday off if they insisted, except in pumping mines-where the work week would be seventy hours.

On July 10^th , the wage dispute broke out in a shooting war at the Gem and Frisco mines. Miners sent a box of black powder down the penstock at the Frisco mine, one company man was killed in the explosion and seven injured.

On September 14, 1896 the night cook at the Tiger-Poorman Hotel, spilled some grease starting the kitchen on fire. The cook spread the alarm of the fire, but was too late to arouse William O’Mera, an Irishman who was burned to death in his room. He was burned beyond recognition “…all but the thighs being burned to a crisp.” Having no relatives in the area he was buried by the miners union in the Nine Mile Cemetery. .” History of North Idaho, p. 1045.

Gem City

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º’ 33.24” W 115º 51 52.88” Elevation 3327

Midway between the towns of Wallace and Burke, on the same railway was the mountain town of Gem and the Helena-Firsco Mine, two miles above Gem toward Burke is the post office of Mace, with Carla Hooper as postmistress.

Aftermath of the Frisco Mine Explosion

Wallace

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 28’ 23” W 115º 55’ 30”

Originally known as “Placer Center” and the “Big Cedar Swarm”, a lumberman from Wisconsin, Col. William R. Wallace platted out eighty acres and fenced the original town site of Wallace. He paid the government with duplicated Sioux script which resulted in a legal dispute where he lost most of his claim. His wife became the first postmaster for a population of 14 citizens. On May 9^th, 1888, Col Wallace was selected as the chairman of the board of the Village of Wallace. Wallace was the cousin to General Wallace, the author of Ben Hur.

One of Wallace’s First Residents

Library of Congress

In 1890 Shoshone County was the most populated county in the new state of Idaho and Wallace was its largest city with 2000 residents.

In July 27, 1890 a fire started in the Central Hotel on 6^th Street in Wallace Idaho. The water supply was exhausted in the first 10 minutes and the town burnt to the ground. Giant powder was used to check the advancing flames but was unable to stop the fire. An Italian Centimio Denarco was burned to death while in a drunken stupor in the New State Saloon on Sixth street. Losses were estimated at $500,000. History of North Idaho, p. 1030.

In the 1890’s, the Coeur d Alene district experienced two significant miners’ uprisings. In 1892, the union’s discovery of a labor spy in their midst, in the person of sometime cowboy and Pinkerton agent, Charlie Siringo, resulted in a shooting war between miners and the company. Years later Harry Orchard, who owned a share of the Hercules Mine in the nearby mountains before it began producing, and who later confessed to dynamiting a $250,000 mill belonging to the Bunker Hill Mining Company near Wardner during another miners uprising in 1899, would also confess to a secret, brutal and little understood role in the Colorado Labor Wars before returning to Idaho to assassinate former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg.

Going to Work, 1909

In 1882 the Minor Owners Association organized in response to the miner’s first union, organized in Wardner on November 3, 1887. In 1892, Mine Owners increased miners’ work hours from 9 to 10 hours per day, with no corresponding increase in pay. The miners declared a strike against the reduction of wages and increase in work hours. Soon every inbound train was filled with replacement workers. Groups of armed, striking miners frequently met the trains and “persuaded” the workers not to take the jobs during a strike. The silver-mine owners responded by hiring Pinkerton and the Thiel Detective Agency agents to infiltrate the union and suppress strike activity. Two mines settled and opened with union men. Two large mines, the Gem and the Frisco mine in Burke-Canyon refused to unionize. An undercover Pinkerton agent, Charlie Siringo began to report all union business to his employers at the Gem mine. Siringo was suspected as a spy when the Mine Owners newspaper, the Coeur d Alene Barbarian began publishing union secrets.

On Sunday night, July 10, there was gunfire at the Frisco mine. The miners claimed the guards fired first, the guards accused the miners. The union men eventually sent a box of black powder down the flume into one of the mine buildings. The building exploded, killing one company man and injuring several others. The union miners fired into a remaining structure where the guards had taken shelter. A second company man was killed, and 60 guards surrendered and were marched to the union hall.

Minutes after the explosion at the Frisco mine, miners searched for Siringo but didn’t find him. Another gunfight broke out at the Gem mine, a man crossing a footbridge was killed, Company forces evacuated the Gem mine and hundreds of union men converged on the Bunker Hill mine at Wardner. About 130 non-union miners were disarmed and expelled from the area. Idaho’s Governor declared Martial Law and brought in six companies of the Idaho National Guard to “suppress insurrection and violence.” Federal troops arrived and confined 600 miners in bullpens without hearings or formal charges. Military rule lasted for four months.

On July 13^th, funeral services for the three union men killed in the Gem battle took place in Wallace. The town band led the procession and 500 mourners shuffled behind the draped wagons. Shortly afterward the procession for two of the nonunion casualties wended its way to the cemetery. There were no mourners, no band.

Governor Willey proclaimed that all of Shoshone County was in a state of rebellion and insurrection and declared martial law. Federal troops that had been posed in nearby army camps poured into Wallace and over 1,000 troops were stationed in the county by the end of the week. Military officers swept aside the sheriff and began making wholesale arrests. The Wallace schoolhouse was converted into a guardhouse and nearly 400 were arrested.

Violence was not isolated in the Northwest, during this same time. Henry Clay Frick fired all employees at the Carnegie Steel Company, locking them out until they agreed to an 18% pay cut. On July 6^th, he hired 300 Pinkerton’s to crush the strike, nine strikers and seven Pinkerton’s were killed.

The Day Wall Street Exploded, p. 59. On July 11, 1892 the Johnson County War broke out in Wyoming. Cattlemen recruited about 50 men and given a bounty of $450.00 for each purported rustler killed. 200 citizens from Buffalo, Wyoming heard of the attack and surrounded the invaders who had to be rescued by U.S. Troops sent by President Benjamin Harrison. The Americans the Democratic Experience, p 32

In 1893 the Wallace city council heard a petition from citizens for the removal of the woman called “Arkansas”, a well known prostitute, from the area of E. 6^th Street to some less centrally located area.

On April 23, 1899 miner’s demands were presented to Bunker Hill’s manager Frederick Burbidge. Burbidge granted wage increase to $3.50 a day for miners and $3.00 a day for mockers, but refused to recognize the union. On his own initiative, Superintendent Albert Burch fired 17 men he believed to be union members. Three days later, 150 unionists turned workers away from the mine and another group seized the tramway carrying ore from the mine to the mill, in effect closing down the mine. Burbridge wired Governor Steunenberg requesting troops.

The union commandeered the Northern Pacific’s “down train” forcing engineer Levi W. Hutton to “Pull out for Wallace, and be damned quick about it.” They ordered the train to stop at the Helena-Frisco mine where they loaded eighty wooden boxes, each containing 50 pounds of dynamite. As the train pulled into the Kellogg depot, nearly 1,000 men were jammed onto the nine freight and two passenger cars. The dynamite was moved into the Bunker Hill concentrator and detonated.

Governor Steunenburg requested President William McKinley to send in the Army, consisting of the 25^th Regiment of Buffalo Soldiers to restore peace.

About 1,000 miners were rounded up and kept in an old barn for about a year with no legal remedy, three prisoners died.

Some of the miners, never having been charged with any crime, were eventually allowed to go free, while others were prosecuted. The mine owners developed a permit system aimed at excluding union miners from employment.

Horace Davenport was appointed as the first teller at the First National Bank of Idaho in Wallace. Davenport went on to build the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, Washington. Magnuson, p 210.

On May 26, 1903 Theodore Roosevelt stopped in Wallace on a campaign tour.

In 1910 one third of Wallace was destroyed in the “Big Burn” which burnt about 3,000,000 acres in Idaho, Washington and Montana in two days. The Big Burn and the 1910 fire engulfed Wallace Idaho. A telegraph operator for the Northern Pacific railroad sent a message: “Every hill around town is a mass of flames and the whole place looks like a death trap. Men, women and children are hysterical in the streets and leave by every possible conveyance and route.” The Big Burn, p. 9.

The smoke was so heavy it blackened out Denver Colorado, 800 miles away. 65 fire fighters died at Big Creek, after being trapped by the fire.

The fire burned nearly 5,000 square miles in a two-day firestorm pushed by 80 mile per hour winds.

On August 7, 1910 President Taft ordered 2,500 troops to fight the fires in the west. The 25^th Infantry stationed at Fort George Wright in Spokane, (all black regiment called the Buffalo Soldiers and part of the bicycle corp. who ride their bikes from Missoula to St. Lewis) and the same troops that imposed martial law during the labor unrest in 1899. The Big Burn, p. 125-126. These troops fought prejudice like that of Senator Ben Tillman from South Carolina: “We have scratched our head to figure out how we can eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed.” The Big Burn, p.127.

On August 10, 1910 Ed Pulaski was credited with saving a majority of his crew of 45 men during what is known as the “Great Idaho Fire” or the “Big Blowup”. It had been unusually dry in 1910 and forest fires were rampant across the northern Rockies. Pulaski was supervising crews on the west fork of Placer Creek, about five miles south of Wallace, when the fire suddenly broke out of control, overwhelming the crew. Pulaski led his men to safety in an abandoned prospect mine. After ordering his crew into a prone on the tunnel floor, he held them there at gunpoint. All but five of the firefighters survived, but two horses with them died from smoke inhalation. Ever after, he carried the scars on his hands and face from keeping the fire at the tunnel entrance.

The mine entrance, now known as the Pulaski Tunnel, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Pulaski is widely credited for the invention of the Pulaski in 1911, a hand tool commonly used in wild land firefighting. A combination hand tool with a mattock for digging or grubbing on one side and an axe for chopping on the other.

Mount Pulaski, a 5480 foot peak 1.5 miles southwest of Wallace is named for him.

Early Fire Lookout

Library of Congress

February 8, 1921 Lona Turner was born at Providence Hospital (AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 28’ 18.05” W 115º 55’ 27.60” Elevation 2755) in Wallace at the mouth of Burke Canyon. She lived at the 217 Bank street before her family moved to San Francisco, California.

Lana Turner, In Big Girl’s Clothes

In 1989 the last stop light between Seattle and Boston on Interstate 90 was removed from downtown Wallace.

Railroad Bridge at Priest River

AGPS Coordinates: N 48º 10’ 49.58” W 116º 53’ 41.01”

Elevation 2,066 Feet

Priest River

AGPS Coordinates: N 48º 10’ 48” W 116º 54’ 53” Elevation 2,170 Feet

In 1898 this town was settled on the east side of the Priest River at Keyser’s Slough, near the confluence of the Priest and the Pend Oreille Rivers. It was moved to its present location following the great Pend Oreille River flood of 1894. The name “Priest” is believed to have been derived from the Kalispel Indian word, “Kaniksu”, meaning “Black Robe”, the name the Indians gave to the Jesuit missionary priests who worked among them. Priest Lake, a resort area to the north on State Highway 57 was referred to as Kaniksu Lake on some old maps.

The name of the town was first called Priest River then later changed to Valencia by the Great Northern Railroad. After encountering a conflict with the post office, the name was changed back to Priest River.

The first schoolhouse was built in 1890 and in 1891 James Judge opened the first post office and possibly the first store. He became deputy sheriff from 1897 to 1902.

When the Great Northern Railroad began surveying the area in 1891 it put out a call for laborers to begin building the railroad in 1892. Workers from southern Italy, most of them from the town of Grimaldi, came to work on the railroad, settling east of town. Amoung the first Italian settlers were the Anselmo, the Naccarato, and the Bombins families and the area became known as “Little Italy.”

City of Mullan

AGPS Coordinates: N 47.º 28’ 10” W 115º 47’53” Elevation 3,278 Feet

Originally named Nigger Prairie after the discovery of a corpse of a black man who died a mysterious death, apparently killed by claim jumpers. Gold was discovered here at the Gold Hunter and Morning mines which became lead-silver producers . The town was built between the two mines. The site was filed in August 1888, when the village had twenty log and fifteen frame houses, a sawmill, and a population of 150. The Great Northern Railway came to it in 1889 and the city was incorporated in 1904.

The Morning Club, built by the Morning Mine Company

Contains a bowling alley and community hall, library and

senior citizen center.

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 28’ 48” W 115º 48’ 78”

Elevation 3,294 Feet

During the Coeur d Alene, Idaho labor confrontation of 1899, 200 miners from Mullan joined the Dynamite express. In the aftermath of the labor war, many of Mullans leaders and Populist elected officials including the Sheriff were arrested and sent to the Wallace bull pens (a makeshift jail).

The city was named for West Point graduate John Mullan, who was in charge of selecting a wagon route (commonly called the Mullan Road) between Fort Benton (Montana) and Fort Walla Walla (Washington). Lieutenant Mullan, a topographical engineer, began gathering information for the road in 1854. Delayed by the Indian War of 1858, construction began in 1859 from Fort Walla Walla. The highest elevation of the road was Mullan Pass at 5168 feet, which is about seven miles east of the city on the Idaho-Montana border.

On the 4^th of July, 1861 John Mullan found himself and his crew in a thick cedar forest at the head of a canyon. Lieutenant Mullan suspended work and the road builders celebrated Independence Day in an old fashioned patriotic manner. They exploded so much powder and punctured the scenery so freely with their rifles that lurking Indians, who had been molesting the crew, thought the whites had gone insane and discretely withdrew into the forest. From then on they considered the road builders “bad medicine” and caused no further trouble. (Washington Historical Quarterly, July 1934, p. 193).

On the same day, Lieutenant Mullan carved an inscription on a white pine tree: “M.R. July 4, 1861.” The M.R. stands for Military Road, initials with which Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis had instructed Mullan to mark the trail at frequent intervals. In 1919 citizens of Idaho moved to have the tree designated as a national memorial.

Mullan Fire Department on Hook and Ladder

Decoration Day, 1812, Library of Congress

In 1931 faculty members of the University of Idaho’s Forestry School examined the tree and discovered dry rot. In 1962, during a heavy wind storm, the top portion of the tree was blown off, leaving a 15 foot stump. Today the tree stands a few hundred yards from Interstate 90, between Coeur d Alene and Kellogg.

AGPS Coordinates: N 47.º 37’ 10.31” W 116º 31’ 02.29”

Elevation 3,041 Feet

City of Harrison

AGPS Coordinates: 47.º N 115.ºW ?

.W. Crane and Sons laid claim to squatters homestead at this site and subsequently opened a general store. The railroad was completed in 1890 and an electric lighting plant was installed in 1901 by Kimmel Brothers at the cost of $8,000. Commercial lighting was furnished at one dollar per light and residence at a lower figure.

There were nine sawmills on the lake at Harrison. On February 14, 1902 the local newspaper, the “Searchlight” published the following:

In the past year Harrison has made rapid advancement in the way of public improvements. One year ago the inhabitants of our town were carrying water for all purposes from the lake in pails, as it was absolutely impossible to procure water by sinking wells. Today water is piped to every house and the hardships that once prevailed in our midst along those lines have disappeared through the thrift and enterprise of the Harrison Water Company. Last fall Kimmel and Kimmel came to our town and applied to the trustees for a franchise to put in an electric light plant; the result is to-day, instead of our business houses and residences being lighted by the dingy kerosene lamp, the button is pushed and the electric light is on every corner of the house. We no longer grope our way through the streets in the dark hours of the night, but the glare of the arc light has turned night into day. Up to the present we have had no mode of communication with the outside world except by mail or telegraph, today we talk over the line of the Interstate Telephone Company to people living in the most remote parts of the country. The crew and apparatus of the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone company are now at Harrison and in less than thirty days we will have a complete telephone exchange and a long-distance line connecting us with the outside world. The Washington Electric Power lines passes through our county within four miles of our town, affording an opportunity to procure electric power for whatever purpose we may have occasion to use it. All of this has come to our town in less than one year. History of North Idaho, p. 800.

Frisco Mill Explosion

AGPS Coordinates: N 47.303º W 115.931º

Frisco Mine

On July 11, 1892 during a gun war that broke out between company and union miners, several boxes of dynamite were exploded, shattering a four-story mill. Overwhelmed by union miners, company managers surrendered. Six fatalities, half from each side, preceded four months of martial law and military occupation by 1,000 soldiers. A long series of battles followed.

Route of the Hiawatha, St. Paul Tunnel

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 22’ 53.07” W 115º 40’ 03.55”Elevation: 4305

Exploration for a railroad route began here in May, 1905 by William Rockefeller (brother of Standard Oil’s John D. Rockefeller) who had bought the Anaconda mine in Butte Montana. On November 1905 the Milwaukee Railroad formally approved the lines extension to Seattle-Tacoma, Washington. The Milwaukee was the 6^th transcontinental railroad and cost $75,000 per mile. The Big Burn, p. 76.

Intercontinental freight service on the new line began on July 4, 1909. The last passenger train for the Olympian Hiawatha passed through the Bitterroots in 1961 and electric engines were gradually replaced by diesel engines. The last train west of Butte passed through this pass in 1980.

With government funding and private donations, the rails were removed and the construction of this spectacular wilderness bicycle and hiking trail was undertaken in 1997. The Idaho portion of the trail first opened for public use on May 29, 1998, the first 13 miles of the trail were opened for the public between Roland and Pearson and goes through 8 open trestles following the mountainous terrain along the Loop Creek drainage. The ride from Roland to Pearson is a gentle ride on an unpaved grade, following a 1.7% grade. The St. Paul Pass, or Taft Tunnel, was completed in May of 2001. The tunnel travels under the Bitterroot Mountains for 1.66 miles and under the Idaho/Montana state line. Helmets and bicycle lights are required.

Passes are purchased at Lolo Pass, from the Lookout Pass parking lot (el. 4730’), the trail follows the old Northern Pacific railroad grade approximately 10 miles to the Taft Site (el. 3630’). Along the way the trail crosses the St. Regis River three times, passes through one tunnel, and goes under Interstate 90 twice before arriving at Taft the trail rises gently at an about 2.1% grade for 2 miles to the East Portal of the St. Paul Pass or Taft Tunnel (el. 4160’).

Craters of the Moon

AGPS Coordinates: N 43.39129 W – 113.5189

Craters of the Moon has been described as “The strangest 75 square miles on the North American Continent” by one early traveler. Others deem it “a weird lunar landscape,” “an outdoor museum of volcanism,” and “a desolate and awful waste”. Virtually unknown until 1921, the area was made a national monument in 1924, and today it embraces 83 square miles. The Shoshone Indians never inhabited this area in large numbers, but they hunted here. Pioneer in covered wagons skirted the lava flows; later cattle ranchers avoided the place; and miners staked claims only nearby.

Surface patterns and formations abound which are typical of basaltic lave associated with volcanism the world over. The fissure vents, volcanic cones and lava flows of the Great Rift zone began erupting only 15,000 years ago and ceased only 2,000 years ago.

The seven mile loop passes the “Devil’s Orchard” a group of lava fragments stands like islands in a sea of cinders. The cave area displays lava flows that hardened on the outside while the lave still flowed within creating tunnel’s like the “Indian Tunnel”, a 30’ by 50’ and 800’ long cave that can be explored like “Raiders of the lost Ark.”

Sun Valley

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º 40’ 50” W 114º 20’ 34”

Elevation: 5961

In 1936 the first destination winter resort in the United States was developed by W. Averell Harriman, the chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad, primarily to increase patronage on passenger trains. A lifelong skier, Harriman determined that America would embrace a destination mountain resort, similar to those in the European Alps, such as St. Moritz. During the winter of 1935-36, Harriman enlisted the services of an Austrian count, Felix Schaffgotsch, to travel across the western U.S. to locate an ideal site for a winter resort. The Count toured Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Yosemite, the San Bernardino Mountains, Zion National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, the Wasatch Mountains, Pocatello, Jackson Hole, and Grand Targhee areas. Late in his trip and on the verge of abandoning his search, he was steered to the Ketchum area in central Idaho. A U.P. employee had mentioned that the rail line to Ketchum had cost the company more money for snow removal than any other branch line.

Schaffgotsch was impressed by the combination of Bald Mountain and its surrounding mountains, adequate snowfall, abundant sunshine, moderate elevation, and absence of wind, and selected it as the site. Harriman visited several weeks later and agreed. The 3,888-acre Brass Ranch was purchased for about $4.00 per acre and construction commenced that spring; it was built in seven months for $1.5 million.

Pioneering publicist Steve Hannigan, who had successfully promoted Miami Beach, was hired and named the resort “Sun Valley.” Count Schaffgotsch returned to Austria and was killed on the Eastern Front during World War II.

The world’s first chairlifts were installed on the resort’s Proctor and Dollar Mountains in the fall of 1936. The chairlift design was adapted from banana loading equipment used on fruit ships in the tropics. The single-seat chairlifts were developed at the Union Pacific headquarters in Omaha in the summer of 1936. The original Proctor Mountain Ski Lift is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

While Bald Mountain was one of the reasons for the selection of the site, it was not initially part of the resort, however it was quickly realized by the resort’s restless Austrian ski instructors that this fantastic mountain needed to be opened to the skiing public as soon as possible. The instructors had hiked up and skied down Baldy on their off days during the resort’s first few seasons.

During his years in Idaho Hemingway worked on The Dangerous Summer, A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream and the Garden of Eden.

Ernest Hemingway completed For Whom the Bell Tolls while staying in suite 206 of the Lodge in the fall of 1939. Averell Harriman had invited Hemingway and other celebrities, primarily from Hollywood, to the resort to help promote it. Gary Cooper was a frequent visitor and hunting/fishing partner, as were Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe and several members of the Kennedy family. Hemingway was a part-time resident over the next twenty years, eventually relocating to Ketchum. The Hemingway Memorial, dedicated in 1966, is just off Trail Creek Road, about a mile northeast of the Sun Valley Lodge.

Hemingway took his own life in his Ketchum home on the 2^nd day of July, 1961, he is buried in the Ketchum cemetery.

Japanese Internment Camp

AGPS Coordinates: N 46.14490 W 115.97790

The Kooskia (KOOS-key) Internment Camp is an obscure and virtually forgotten World War II U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detention facility that was located in a remote area of north-central Idaho between May 1943 and May 1945. It held “enemy aliens” of Japanese ancestry from Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington, as well as Japanese from Peru, Mexico and Panama. Although some of the 256 internees held camp jobs, most of these all-male, paid volunteers were construction workers for the present Highway 12 between Lewiston, Idaho and Lolo, Montana, parallel to the wild and scenic Lochsa River.

Most people are familiar with the World War II hysteria that in early 1942 led to the incarceration of some 120,000 West Coast Americans of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were American citizens. In violation of their constitutional rights, these people, from infants to the elderly, were forcibly herded first into assembly centers, such as the euphemistically-named “Camp Harmony” in Puyallup, Washington and then into one of the ten enormous War Relocation Authority concentration camp installations that mushroomed in inhospitable locations within seven states—Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming.

The Idaho one, called the Minidoka Relocation Center, was at Hunt, in the southeastern Idaho desert. Much less known are the Justice Department’s Immigration and Naturalization Service’s internment camps for so-called “enemy aliens.” Following Pearl Harbor, three presidential proclamations made it possible to arrest and detain Japanese, German and Italian aliens on no specific grounds and without the due process guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution.

Of 1,771 people arrested immediately following the December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, more than two-thirds were Japanese. They included Japanese community organization officials, language teachers, and priests, as well as “newspaper editors, and other identifiable leaders. Most of those arrested were taken to Fort Missoula, in Montana and Fort Lincoln (at Bismarck) in North Dakota. By early March 1942 some 4000 aliens were incarcerated, mainly in those two locations. Most were later transferred to their alien internment camps operated by the Justice Department.

In all, there were at least 18 “temporary internment camps” and nine “permanent” ones. These were separate and distinct from the War Relocation Authority’s concentration camps for West Coast families. Besides Fort Missoula and Fort Lincoln, some of the other Immigration and Naturalization Service camps were in Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Another was in northern Idaho, near Kooskia.

On the morning of May 27, 1943 a “curious crowd” assembled at the Lewiston, Idaho, Union Pacific train depot. They had come to observe the arrival of what the Lewiston Morning Tribune blatantly called the “Jap special,” a train carrying “(o)ne hundred-four Japanese,…under the supervision of an inspector of the federal bureau of immigration and naturalization assisted by six husky, armed members of the border patrol…”

The Immigration and Naturalization service’s Kooskia Internment Camp utilized the buildings and facilities of the Canyon Creek Prison Camp, a work camp for federal prisoners who helped construct the Lewis and Clark Highway between 1935 and 1943. The federal prisoners were moved out in May 1943, and the Japanese internees began arriving a week later.

Dworshak Dam

AGPS Coordinates: 46º 30’53” N 116º17’48” W

Construction began in 1966 and was completed in 1972, this dam was originally named “Bruce’s Eddy” but was changed to honor Henry C. Dowrshak, a U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1946-62. The dam is the highest straight-axis concrete dam in the Western Hemisphere and the 22^nd highest dam in the world. There three hydroelectric generators in the powerhouse, one with a rated 220,000 kilowatt capacity and two with 90,000 kilowatt capacities.

Emerald Creek Garnet Area

AGPS Coordinates: N 46º 59’ 49” W 116º 21’ 54”

The U.S. Department of Interior expanded its mineral regulations to allow garnet-permit digging in the Emerald Creek area. Star garnets are Idaho’s State Gem. The Garnet is a mineral which normally forms in the rocks subjected to high temperature and pressure: 900 degrees F., and 70,000 psi. Elements required for formation of garnets include iron, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen. Often garnets are a byproduct of tungsten mines.

The garnets found here are called “star garnets” because of a unique property that causes some of them to display a reflection like a four or six pointed star. India is the only other place in the world where star garnets like these are found in any quantity. The 12-sided (dodecahedron) crystals found here range in size from sand particles to golf-ball or larger size. Gem quality faceting material is also found at the Garnet area.

From St. Maries, Idaho, follow Highway 3 south 24 miles to Road 477. Proceed southwest 8 miles on gravel Road 477 to the parking area. Permits, information and the sluice area are a ½ mile hike up 281 Gulch.

WASHINGTON STATE

Mount Rainier

AGPS Coordinates: 46°51′N 121°45″W

Mt. Rainier as seen from Tacoma

Mount Rainier National Park was the nation's fifth national park. Established by an act of Congress in 1899, it followed Yellowstone in 1872 and Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant National Parks in 1890. Mount Rainier had a significant part in the founding of the National Park System. Even more than the three California parks which preceded it, Mount Rainier National Park served to differentiate the idealistic purposes of national parks from the more utilitarian functions of national forests, or "forest reserves" as they were known at the time. As the first national park established after the founding of the national forest system in the 1890s, Mount Rainier demonstrated that the emerging national park idea was not to be subsumed by the burgeoning conservation movement, whose central goal was to increase efficiency in the use and development of the nation's resources. The establishment of Mount Rainier National Park reaffirmed the nation's intent to set aside certain areas of outstanding scenic and scientific value for the enjoyment of present and future generations. The arguments that were marshalled in support of Mount Rainier National Park during the 1890s helped shape the national park idea at a crucial time.

The legislation which established the park was in some ways precedent-setting. Mount Rainier was the first national park to be created from lands that were already set aside as forest reserves, forming a precedent for numerous national parks established in the twentieth century. Lands within the park boundary which had been granted to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company were reclaimed under the act in order to make the national park whole. This insistence on federal ownership of the land became another hallmark of American national parks in the twentieth century. In other respects, the act which created Mount Rainier National Park followed the Yellowstone prototype and reinforced an emerging pattern of national park legislation. For these reasons, it is appropriate to examine the origins of Mount Rainier National Park in a national context.

It needs to be noted, however, that the founding of Mount Rainier National Park was very much a local affair. Unlike the campaign for Yellowstone National Park, much of the impetus for the park came from the local populace. Local mountaineering clubs, newspaper editors, businessmen's associations, and University of Washington faculty all voiced support for the national park. Without their sustained interest, it is doubtful that Washington state's senators and congressmen would have shown such perseverence in pushing the legislation through Congress. After 1900, Seattle and Tacoma businessmen were unusually aggressive in seeking congressional appropriations for the park. Seattle and Tacoma pleasure-seekers increasingly traveled to the park by automobile, establishing a pattern of visitor use in Mount Rainier National Park that would persist throughout the twentieth century. Thus the park's founding years also reflect the growing influence of Seattle and Tacoma on their western Washington hinterland.

The campaign for Mount Rainier National Park cannot be neatly characterized or narrated. It involved many disparate elements. No single figure stood out as the leader of the campaign, nor did any single organization coordinate it. A handful of scientists who had had personal experience with Mount Rainier might be considered the driving force behind the campaign. They were scattered all around the nation, knew each other professionally, and used the opportunity of professional meetings to form committees and prepare memorials to Congress setting forth the reasons for a national park. A few dozen mountaineers, most of whom resided in the Puget Sound area, could also be considered the driving force behind the campaign. It was largely due to their infectious enthusiasm for the mountain, which they communicated through public talks and letters to the local newspapers, that Washington state's senators and congressmen came to view the national park campaign as a popular cause. The Northern Pacific Railroad Company could also be credited with helping to spawn the park idea in 1883 and finally bringing the national park legislation to fruition in the late 1890s. Its shadowy role in the long legislative history of the bill was crucial in the end.

The campaign was also prolonged. In a loose sense of the term the "campaign" dates from 1883, when a party of prominent Europeans traveled via the Northern Pacific Railroad to Wilkeson and the Carbon River area, and afterwards urged that the mountain and its glaciers be set aside as a national park. Nothing came of this early proposal, however, and if the campaign is viewed as a concerted effort to push the idea in Congress, it really dates from the summer of 1893. Most of the arguments in support of the national park were advanced around this time. In still another sense, the campaign reached its crucial phase at the end of the decade, when some political horse-trading gave the establishing act its specific form.

The Indians of the Pacific Northwest held in awe the snowcapped volcanoes of the Cascade Range. Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount Saint Helens, and Mount Hood, with their looming presence on the horizon, frequent cloud caps, rumbling avalanches, and terrifying eruptions, inspired numerous legends about the spirits that were thought to inhabit them. The Indians' legends told of fiery eruptions in the distant past, of vicious feuds when the mountains hurled rocks at one another, of a great flood when all the lowlands were inundated, killing all creatures except the pure ones which climbed to the mountain tops and ascended ropes of arrows into the sky. In the Indians' view, humans offended the mountain spirits at their peril.

Asahel Curtis photograph of Rainier Park Company President Henry Rhodes (front), Mount Rainier National Park Superintendent O.A. Tomlinson (middle), and National Park Service Director Stephen Mather (right), against a backdrop of Mount Rainier, 1928. (Photo courtesy of the Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma, Washington)

It is very difficult today to separate legends and other facets of the Indians' relationship to Mount Rainier from the history of the area as a national park. Indian legends about the mountain held strong appeal for whites who sought to preserve and promote the mountain's scenic grandeur. Many white people who themselves felt a kind of reverence for Mount Rainier worked diligently to preserve Indian legends and place names in order to give Mount Rainier National Park a local accent. The best known work of this kind was John H. Williams's The Mountain That Was "God" (1911), in which the author contended that Puget Sound Indians had once perceived Mount Rainier, or "Takhoma," as the most dreadful of all the Pacific Northwest's volcanoes. Whether consciously or not, Williams and many others were, in effect, creating a history of Indians on Mount Rainier to suit their purpose of celebrating the mountain.

The story of Sluiskin, Mount Rainier's most famous Indian, reveals much about the complexity of the Indian relationship to Mount Rainier. In 1870, Sluiskin served as guide to a party of white men who were intent on climbing Mount Rainier. As this early climbing party approached the lower slopes of the mountain, Sluiskin grew more and more despondent. Finally, on the eve of the ascent, he exhorted the white men not to attempt the climb or they would be punished by demons. He told his white companions of the angry spirit that animated "Takhoma" and inhabited a "lake of fire" in the summit crater. He refused to go farther. The white men, undaunted, successfully reached the summit the next day where they took shelter in the warm steam vents that Sluiskin had apparently alluded to, and returned to camp on the day following. Sluiskin, who had given them up for dead, greeted them with cries of "Skookum tillicum! Skookum tumtum!" ("Strong men! Brave hearts!")

Many years later, in 1915, Sluiskin's identity became wreathed in mystery. A Yakima chief named Sluiskin claimed that it was he who had guided the climbing party, but others insisted that the original Sluiskin had belonged to another tribe. Articles appeared in the Tacoma Ledger. Tacoma Daily News, and Yakima Republic, variously disputing or supporting the old chief's claim. David Longmire, the son of James Longmire and a longtime resident in the area, stated that he knew three different Sluiskins. The dispute was never settled to anyone's satisfaction. [4] Years later, ethnologist Allan H. Smith made the original Sluiskin a Taidnapam (Upper Cowlitz) Indian rather than a Yakima. [5]

The significance of Sluiskin is that whites and Indians alike transformed the man into a symbol of the Indian relationship to the mountain. For the Yakima chief who claimed to be the guide of forty-five years earlier, the thing of importance was that the country had "once belonged to us." [6] This Chief Sluiskin told a local writer who was trying to test the veracity of his story that when he was a young man the climbing party had hired him on the pretense of surveying the line of the Yakima Indian Reservation established under the Yakima Treaty of 1855. That was why he had led the party to the mountain. For whites, Sluiskin had a different meaning. The story of Sluiskin's fireside oration became a metaphor for the Indians' dread of the mountain. The account of Sluiskin was the most familiar of many accounts by pioneer climbers of Mount Rainier which described the reluctance of their Indian guides to accompany them too far up the mountain. The Indian guide became a foil for demonstrating the climbers' courage and impetuosity, genuine as those character traits may have been. The image of the fearful native in a forbidding wilderness was not peculiar to Mount Rainier climbing accounts, but was practically a convention in the literature of nineteenth century exploration. It had special relevance to Mount Rainier National Park, however, because these nineteenth century pioneer climbs played such a crucial role in framing twentieth century Americans' perception of the mountain and its original inhabitants. The anecdotes about Sluiskin and other Indian guides were repeated so often that they became part of the mountain's mythology.

Sentiment about the mountain and Mount Rainier National Park shaped people's perceptions of the Indian relationship to Mount Rainier in other ways, too. In the twentieth century, Americans increasingly looked to national parks as places where they could find vestiges of their past. Park patrons enjoyed the association of parklands and Indians. Next to their feeling of awe about the mountain, Indians were most often remembered for the seasonal use they made of the area to pick berries and hunt game. This also obtained a picturesque quality over the years in the context of the national park. Early settlers of Washington Territory told a story about Henry, a Yakima Indian and son of a chief. He was banished from his tribe for killing a medicine man, and forced to flee to the west side of the Cascades. Each spring, the story went, Henry vanished into the mountains with his poor squaws and lean ponies. He was nearly given up for dead, only to reappear in the fall, grinning to himself, with his wives looking plump and content and his ponies laden with venison and dried berries. Asked by whites to reveal where his hunting ground was, Henry always shook his head, and the reputation of his secret hunting ground grew each year. Finally a man succeeded in trailing the old Indian to his summer camp on the southwest side of Mount Rainier, a place that became known as Indian Henry's Hunting Ground. Within a few years a permanent trail was built to this flower-strewn meadow and it became one of the popular backcountry destinations in the national park. That Henry was a real person, whose Indian name was So-to-lick, mattered less than the fact that his story captured the imagination of so many local residents. The story was another example of how Indian use of Mount Rainier became intertwined with local mythology about the mountain.

Mount Rainier National Park, like other national parks, commemorated Indians' past use of the area through Indian place names. White Americans' fondness for Indian names has been described as a form of nationalism, for it celebrated what was distinctively American. Americans were nowhere more enthusiastic about Indian place names than in national parks, with their aim to preserve the American heritage. Sometimes the use of Indian names in national parks was undertaken with the benefit of native informants and ethnographic data, as was the case in Glacier National Park, Montana, where ethnologist George Bird Grinnell restored original Indian names to many of the park's natural features. In other cases, Indian names were applied more whimsically. In Mount Rainier National Park many glaciers, rivers, parks, and waterfalls took their names from Indian individuals and groups associated with the area, or from the old trading language known as Chinook jargon. The names Nisqually, Cowlitz, Yakima, and Puyallup came from tribes in the region; Sluiskin from the famous guide; Owyhigh from a Yakima chief; Mowich from the Chinook jargon term for deer; Ollala from the term for berries; Mazama from the term for mountain goat. The practice of using names of Indian origin, wrote Park Naturalist Floyd Schmoe, was "far more in keeping with the policy of the National Park Service than that of bestowing the names of more or less obscure people, as so often happens."

Indian place names sometimes originated from contemporary events rather than original Indian names for that particular place. In the early 193Os, as the road to Yakima Park neared completion and plans developed for a hotel development there, boosters in the Puget Sound region lobbied for changing the name of this broad ridgetop to Sunrise in order to avoid confusion with the city of Yakima. The Yakima Chamber of Commerce wanted to retain the name Yakima Park. L. V. McWhorter, a rancher, writer, and friend of the Yakima Indians, pushed for an Indian name, either Me-yah-ah Pah or "Owhi's Meadow," in honor of a Yakima chief. McWhorter described in some detail how Owhi's band had used Yakima Park for a summer hunting ground and a place to engage in horse racing and other events of the season.

Sham battles were staged there, and warriors rehearsed their feats of skill and daring, and there were foot-racing and wrestling and the playing of games now forgotten except by a very few of the old Indians. Dancing, wooing, religious ceremonies, wailing for the dead--all the things that were a part of the oldtime Indian life are associated with this place.

McWhorter made a strong case, but he did not wield as much influence as the advocates of Sunrise and Yakima Park. The NPS found a tactful way to settle this dispute by using the name Sunrise for the development site, Yakima Park for the physical land form, and Owhi (in altered form) for the Owyhigh Lakes.

The passion for Indian names in national parks may have reached a climax in the furor over the name of Mount Rainier itself, which many local citizens wanted to change to Mount Tacoma. This battle raged on for many years and fixed in many people's minds the idea that "Tacoma" was the Puget Sound Indians' word for "The Mountain That Was God." Opponents of the name change insisted that Tacoma was merely a generic term for snow-capped peak. The controversy came to involve much more than an interest in historical accuracy, for citizens of Tacoma saw an opportunity to associate their city with the national park and the tourism revenue it generated. Citizens of Seattle and other communities around the mountain saw the name change as a crass, commercial gimmick masterminded by the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce. The controversy showed how something as "Indian" as the name of the mountain could be appropriated by whites and invested with meanings that were practically unrelated to any real Indian concerns. This was one fight for the restoration of an Indian name that the NPS assiduously avoided.

Folklore about Indians and Mount Rainier was not the only way in which the national park celebrated the past through Indians. In 1925, Yakima Indians agreed to perform for tourists at Paradise Park, on the south flank of Mount Rainier. They held daily drum dances, rode horses, and demonstrated their spear fishing. Their leader was none other than Chief Sluiskin. The Rainier National Park Company, a concession operation, sponsored the events. The agreement soon broke down, apparently because the Indians proved unwilling to pose for souvenir photographs. While the NPS was not averse to this activity and occasionally arranged similar events in other parks, it apparently did not become involved with this one.

At the same time that these Indians were performing some of their people's traditional uses of the park for the amusement of hotel guests at Paradise, other Indians were continuing to visit Mount Rainier to gather huckleberries which they dried for food. That they did not receive the same attention as the performing Indians was not surprising. At that time Indian use of the park did not match whites' preconceptions of Indians in nature. "The Indian of today," wrote Park Naturalist Floyd Schmoe, has lost much of his former picturesqueness. Although the women still carry their "papooses" in a shawl on their backs and use some very remarkable baskets made by their mothers from the local Squaw grass, it is more common to see them arrive in closed cars than upon wiry mountain ponies, and although some of them still employ the Chinook jargon, or tribal dialects, typical American slang phrases are as frequently heard.

Such an invidious comparison underscored how the national park setting shaped people's perceptions of contemporary and historical Indian use of the area.

The conflict in the public's mind between romanticized Indians like those who performed for tourists at Paradise Park, and Indians who still used the park's natural resources was at no time more evident than in 1915-17, when Chief Sluiskin and his band of Indians from the Yakima Reservation pressed for their perceived right to hunt in the park under the Yakima Treaty of 1855. The incidents leading up to the arrests of six Indians in 1917 and the official correspondence surrounding them is worth reviewing, for the case was precedent-setting and revealed much about the ambiguities of NPS-Indian relations. A Department of the Interior solicitor's opinion in 1915 held that the federal government could not prohibit Indian hunting in the park. But the NPS's chief clerk, J.J. Cotter, advised one year later that the solicitor's opinion had been superseded by a state law and two court opinions. As a result of this legal premise, park administrators continued to forbid hunting by Indians.

The issue of treaty protected hunting rights first came to light in July 1915, when Ranger Thomas E. O'Farrell was passing through Yakima Park, northeast of the mountain, and found the remains of an Indian camp. The camp included a wigwam and two horse corrals, all of which were built from timber cut down in the area. Large quantities of bones and other animal remains lay about. O'Farrell reported to Supervisor DeWitt L. Reaburn that "bands of natives" had been making annual visits to the park to hunt deer, and he wanted to be advised whether they had treaty rights. If they had no such rights, he wanted to know what steps he should take to end this practice. Reaburn forwarded O'Farrell's letter to the Secretary of the Interior. The Department replied that in order to make a determination, it was necessary to know to which tribe the Indians belonged.

Knowing that the Indians usually encamped at Yakima Park in late summer, O'Farrell sent his two assistant rangers, Leonard Rosso and Arthur White, back there at the end of August. Rosso and White found about thirty Yakima Indians encamped in the high meadow with their leader, Sluiskin. Using a Yakima woman interpreter, they told Sluiskin that it was against the law to hunt game in the park. Sluiskin referred the rangers to the Walla Walla Treaty that his nation's chief had signed sixty years earlier in 1855. Sluiskin believed that the treaty reserved rights to hunt, gather, and fish on all open and unclaimed lands formerly belonging to the Yakima tribe. Rosso and White did not press the issue with Sluiskin, but reported to Reaburn that the Indians claimed rights under the Walla Walla Treaty. Reaburn wired the Secretary on September 1, 1915:

The Yakima Indians under Chief Sluiskin are now on a hunting expedition in the northeast corner of the park. They refuse to obey the ranger's orders claiming the right to hunt and kill as they please, but say they will slaughter only what is needed.

Assistant Secretary Bo Sweeney submitted the matter to the Department's solicitor, noting that the treaty's restriction of Indian hunting rights to "open and unclaimed land" probably meant that the treaty right did not extend "within the metes and bounds" of Mount Rainier National Park. But the solicitor's opinion, given three weeks later, surprised him.

Solicitor Preston C. West argued that the act of 1899 establishing Mount Rainier National Park did not terminate the Indians' treaty right to hunt game within the boundaries of the park. First, the solicitor argued, the national park did not remove the area from the status of "open and unclaimed land" as it was construed in the treaty. West referred to the longstanding principle in federal Indian law which required the courts to resolve all ambiguities of meaning in Indian treaties according to how they had been understood by the Indians. The Indians who signed the Walla Walla Treaty of 1855, West presumed, recognized ''open and unclaimed land'' as land that was not settled upon or appropriated by claimants under the general land laws. The treaty's Indian signers, West argued, "intended to reserve the right to hunt on the open and unclaimed lands as effectually as they reserved the right to fish in waters outside the reservation described in the treaty for their use."

Second, the act of 1899 did not specifically address hunting by Indians. With respect to the protection of game, the act of 1899 gave the Secretary authority "to provide against the wanton destruction of the fish and game found within said park, and against their capture or destruction for the purposes of merchandise or profit." Looking at the treaty right issue in the context of 1855, West argued, it did not seem that either party had in view the wanton destruction of game or hunting by the Indians for the purposes of merchandise and profit. Therefore, wrote West, "the law of 1899 simply stated specifically what was necessarily implied in the treaty." Since the treaty language appeared not to have given the Indians the right to destroy game wantonly or to hunt game for the market, West reasoned that the act of 1899 had taken nothing away. It followed that the Indians' right to hunt for their subsistence within the park had not been taken away by the law of 1899, either. This did not mean that subsistence hunting by Indians was not subject to regulation, West hastened to add. Since the act of 1899 gave the Secretary of the Interior broad authority to fulfill the purposes of the park, and the park was created for the public's enjoyment, "the Indians must exercise their privilege in such manner as not to defeat this expressed purpose." In sum, West believed that Indian hunting rights and national park purposes were in fact compatible under carefully drawn regulations.

This was a remarkable formulation. In effect, it called for park administrators to treat the Indian groups who had made traditional use of Mount Rainier as living cultures rather than historical artifacts. Nothing in the solicitor's opinion suggested that Indians who hunted in the park would in any way enhance the public's enjoyment; the intent was not to put them on display as the Rainier National Park Company did at Paradise Park in 1925. West merely supposed that subsistence use of the park by Indians would be benign from the standpoint of protecting park resources, and that the public could be persuaded to tolerate it.

Unfortunately, this idea clashed with the popular conception of national parks as vestiges of America's past. When Indians hunted in national parks, it stirred images in the public's mind of picturesque noble savages and white-Indian conflict. A writer for the Tacoma Ledger, for example, could not resist reporting the incident as if it were a humorous throwback to the Indian Wars. For the first time in the park's history, government officials had "indulged...in an Indian hunt," the newspaper stated. "The result was a bag of four Indian bucks, two squaws, 20 head of horses and 'artillery' consisting of three fine rifles." The report gave details of the "chase," the officials' cautious advance on the "Indian encampment," the curious "federal court" held in an automobile, and the confiscation of the Indians' "artillery." From the newspaper's standpoint, the incident closed with "the departure of six sad but wiser Indians, gladdened somewhat by the return of their horses and other trappings, to their native hunting grounds in the Yakima country." In contrast to the solicitor's opinion, the journalist assumed, as his readers probably did as well, that Indians had no place in the national park except as symbols of America's frontier past. Perhaps it was for this reason that no one in the Department followed West's advice to draft park regulations that would be sensitive to Indian hunting rights.

The Department may have chosen to ignore the solicitor's opinion for another reason as well. It ran counter to the current trend in game law for increased state jurisdiction over game management, including hunting of game by Indians outside Indian reservations. Shortly after West wrote his opinion, the Washington State Supreme Court decided in State v. Towessnute that Yakima Indians outside their reservation were subject to the state game laws. The following year, in June 1916, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a decision affirming the right of the State of New York to regulate fishing by Seneca Indians on lands which that tribe had ceded to the United States. The Washington State Game Commission brought these facts to the attention of national park and national forest administrators in Washington in October 1916.24 A further development that bore on the issue of Indian treaty rights in Mount Rainier National Park was the Act of Congress of June 30, 1916, which accepted the cession by the State of Washington of exclusive jurisdiction over the lands embraced within the park. This act clarified the authority of park officials to make arrests.

The initiative to end subsistence hunting by Indians in the park came from local authorities--seasonal park rangers, state and county game wardens, newspaper editors--and not from any general policy that was crystallizing in the national park system bureaucracy. On October 28, 1916, Supervisor Reaburn wired Superintendent of National Parks Robert B. Marshall that the band of Yakima Indians was back in the park hunting game. "Shall we arrest them and bring them before the park commissioner," read the telegram, "instructions desired immediately." Marshall replied affirmatively. Although the decision finally came from NPS officials in Washington, D.C., these officials were responding to the pressure of events at the local level.

If Reaburn acted immediately on Marshall's instruction, he failed to catch any Indian violators that season. The following summer, Reaburn stationed Park Ranger O.W. Curtis in Yakima Park. When word came from Curtis of the Indians' presence there in early October 1917, Reaburn responded with haste. Starting out from headquarters at Longmire with Ranger John Yorke and Commissioner Edward S. Hall, he drove his automobile all day on rough and circuitous roads clockwise around the outside of the park to the White River, which he reached shortly after dark; then, leaving two hours before light the next morning with Yorke, he hiked on foot up to the Indians' encampment. They arrested six Indians in the possession of freshly skinned deer hides, and brought them back down to the White River for a "court" appointment with Commissioner Hall beside Reaburn's automobile. As the Indians offered no resistance and pleaded guilty to the charge of illegal hunting, Hall gave them all light fines.

That the new NPS lacked a definite policy on subsistence hunting by Indians was further demonstrated by the drawn out correspondence which ensued between senior officials of the NPS and the Office of Indian Affairs over the proper disposition of the three confiscated rifles. Assistant Director Horace M. Albright wanted to use the occasion of returning these items to the Indians to make an official announcement that the Indians' treaty rights did not extend to the park. Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs E.B. Meritt initially opposed having the BIA be a party to any such announcement. Reaburn finally worked out a compromise with the Yakima Reservation's superintendent, Don M. Carr. The warning that these officials issued to the Indians is not in the records, but the arrests evidently had the desired effect.

Index

September 20, 1805 Lewis and Clark at Weippe

AGPS Coordinates: N 46º43’678”, W 116º 00’ 365”

Lewis and Clark Discovery Center, Lewiston Idaho

AGPS Coordinates: N 49º22.094 W 117º03.432

1806 Lolo Pass

AGPS Coordinates: 47º27.3N, 115º41.7W

Long Camp- Milepost 67.6:

1807 Coeur d Alene AGPS Coordinates: 47º41’34”N, 116º46’48”W

June 8, 1811 Seneacquoteen Cemetery AGPS Coordinates: 48º09’04”N, 116º45”28”

Seneacquoteen Crossing

1831 Cataldo

Mission AGPS Coordinates: 47º32’53”N, 116º21’25”W

The Mission of the Sacred Heart

The Coeur d Alene Tribe of Indians sent successive delegations to St.

1834 Fort Boise

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º49’ 37” W 117º1/2”

1834 Fort Hall

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º 01’ 49.54”, W 112º 25’ 30.86”

Elevation 4458

1836 Spalding’s Mission AGPS Coordinates: N 46º27”130”W, 116º 49’ 102”

1851 Seattle AGPS Coordinates: N 47º36’35” W 122º 19’ 59”

May 17, 1858 Steptoe Butte AGPS Coordinates:

Battle of Steptoe Butte

August 1858 Fort Taylor AGPS Coordinates:

September 1, 1858 Four Lakes AGPS Coordinates: 47° 33.705′ N, 117° 35.778′ W.

The Battle of Four Lakes

September 9, 1858 Horse Slaughter Camp AGPS Coordinates: N 47° 41.245' W 117°

04.431'

September 24, 1858 Hangman Creek AGPS Coordinates: 45º51’36” W 121º29’51”

September 30, 1860 Canal Gulch AGPS Coordinates: N 46º29’36”, W 115º 47’ 56”

City of Pierce

1861 Lewiston AGPS coordinates: N 46º 25’ 00” W 117º 01’ 04”

1861 Oro Fino AGPS Coordinates: N 46.47935 and W -116.25514

Orofino

1861 City of Rathdrum AGPS Coordinates: 47.808457ºN 116.89241ºW

Rathdrum

July 4, 1861 Mullan Tree AGPS Coordinates: N 47° 37.215 W 116° 31.163

The Mullan Road

1862 Nez Perce Trail; AGPS Coordinates N 45º44’3” W 114º33’32”.

1871 Spokan AGPS Coordinates: Nº 47’ 39’ 32” W 117º 25’ 30”

1871 Treaty Rock

Post Falls, Idaho

AGPS Coordinates: Nº 47’ 42” W 116º 57’ 85”

July 11-12, 1877

Nez Perce War; AGPS Coordinates:

1877 Idaho’s First Railroad,

Inkom, Idaho

AGPS Coordinates: 42º40’14” N 112º 14’ 52” W

1882 Thompson Pass

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º34’38” W 115º43’3”

January 30, 1884 Wyatt Earp arrives in Eagle City

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º41’ 44” W 116º21’ 11”

1884 Burke Burke Canyon

AGPS Coordinates: 47º31’13”N, 115º49’13”W

1884 Wallace AGPS Coordinates: 47º 28’ 23” N 115º 55’ 30” W

July 11, 1892 Frisco Mill Exposition

AGPS Coordinates: 47.303º N 115.931ºW

Frisco Mine

1884 City of Murray AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 37’38”, W 115º 51’ 29.65”

Elevation 2781

1898 Priest River AGPS Coordinates: N 48º 10’ 48” W 116º 54’ 53”

Elevation 2,170 Feet

1884 City of Mullan AGPS Coordinates: N 47.º 28’ 10” W 115º 47’53”

Elevation 3,278 Feet

1905 Route of the Hiawatha

AGPS Coordinates:

Coeur d Alene Federal Building

AGPS Coordinates: N 47º 40.474 W 116º 46.860

1809 Sand Point Coordinates: 48º09’04”N, 116º45”28”

1924 Craters of the Moon

AGPS Coordinates: N 43.39129 W – 113.5189

1936 Sun Valley

AGPS Coordinates: N 43º 40’ 50” W 114º 20’ 34”

Elevation: 5961

May 1945 Japanese Internment Camp

AGPS Coordinates: N 46.14490 W 115.97790

June1966 Dworshak Dam;

AGPS Coordinates: 46º 30’53” N 116º17’48” W

Emerald Creek Garnet Area

AGPS Coordinates: N 46º 59’ 49” W 116º 21’ 54”

WASHINGTON STATE

Mount Rainier AGPS Coordinates: 46°51′N 121°45″W