Passageway Into The Wilderness
The Pend Oreille River dates back more than 20,000 years ago to the last Ice Age when enormous glaciers pushed their way through northern Idaho. As the climate warmed, the glaciers receded and backfilled the U-shaped carved valleys with melt water creating the Pend Oreille River we see today.
Aboriginal. peoples, the Lower Pend d'Oreilles Indians known today as the Kalispel, were the first to discover the Pend Oreille. The Indians not only depended upon the river for food, the river also served as a passageway. Traveling by canoes, the Indians paddled the Pend Oreille to distant hunting grounds in search of prized buffalo.
One of the first white men to discover and travel the Pend Oreille was Canadian Explorer David Thompson. Seeking a water passage to the Columbia River, Thompson canoed the Pend Oreille to explore and map northern Idaho. Not long after, the Kalispel Indians found themselves sharing the river with fur trappers, traders, and early settlers coming into northern Idaho seeking new fortunes.
During the late 1880s, the Pend Oreille River became a passageway into the wilderness. At that time, Idaho's northern forests held enormous timber wealth. Lumber towns sprang up seemingly overnight transforming the Pend Oreille into a two-lane highway. The river quickly became a vital economic engine. Steam-powered sternwheelers hauled passengers and freight as tugboats towing floating log brails steamed past heading to local sawmills.
Ferryboats ushered in the next generation of river traffic. As towns sprang up seemingly overnight, access to both sides of the river became necessary. Ferryboats provided the only cost-effective answer to bridges. One of the most prominent ferries along the river was the Newport Ferry, which began service in 1893 directly across from where you are now standing. Operating a ferry was a fulltime business. A ferryboat would average four river crossings per hour, and two at night. Although a typical crossing was only a quarter-mile long, a ferry operated all year long, logging more than 12,000 miles per year.
River travel on the Pend Oreille continued into the 1900s even though wagon roads were slowly replacing riverboats. Eventually, river travel gave way entirely as the Great Northern Railroad replaced slow moving sternwheelers and horse drawn wagons. The passageway's final chapter came to a close in 1927 with the completion of the first highway bridge across the Pend Oreille. Although the Pend Oreille today provides unlimited recreation, its legacy continues as Idaho's waterway passage that opened the Inland Northwest to settlement.
From the History Marker