To understand our history, one must first take into account our geography. While our area is dominated by mountains, the most prominent feature is Lake Pend Oreille, with an area of 148 square miles, and 111 miles of coastline. After the Great Salt Lake it is the 2nd largest in the Western US. It is 65 miles long, and 1,150 feet deep in some regions (5th in the US). Fed by Clark Fork River and drained by the Pend Oreille River. It is surrounded by national forests and many small towns, including Bayview, Hope, and Sandpoint. All but the southern tip of the lake is in Bonner County, the southern tip which is home to Farragut State Park, the original home of the Farragut Naval Training Station, and the home of the NAVSEA's Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division's Acoustic Research Detachment (ARD) is in Kootenai County.

The lake is home to many species of fish including: rainbow trout, lake trout, perch, crappie, bass, walleye, whitefish and kamloops. The forests are known to have various pines, such as ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, poplar and western larch. Whitetail deer, squirrels, black bears, coyotes, elk, cougar, and bobcats are known to reside in these forests. Bald Eagles, osprey, owls, hummingbirds, hawks, woodpeckers, ducks and the mountain bluebird are seen in the skies around the lake.

It is also believed that the eastern side of the lake was in the path of the ancient Missoula Flood. This is the great event that shaped much of the Inland Empire of the Pacific Northwest. The Missoula Flood is an Ice Age event that has been featured on NOVA, and refer to the catastrophic floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and down the Columbia River Gorge at the end of the last ice age. Farragut State Park is located where the Lake Missoula Floods broke out from the end of Lake Pend Oreille.

The floods were the result of the periodic sudden rupture of the ice dam on the Clark Fork River that created Glacial Lake Missoula. After each rupture of the ice dam, the waters of the lake would rush down the Clark Fork and the Columbia River, inundating much of eastern Washington and the Willamette Valley in western Oregon. After the rupture, the ice would reform, recreating Glacial Lake Missoula once again.

Geologists estimate that the cycle of flooding and reformation of the lake lasted on average of 55 years and that the floods occurred approximately 40 times over the 2,000 year period between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago.

The other great shaping feature was the area’s glaciers. The rugged mountainous beauty of this area of North Idaho was formed by these two components. For thousands of years, these two forces of nature were actively moving the landscape of North Idaho. The glacial ice sheets moved land, mountain, and water over centuries. The floods occurred over relatively shorter periods. The areas of the Lake Pend Oreille and the Clark Fork River held a dam of ice that towered over two thousand feet today’s lake level. When this dam failed many times over the millennia a deluge of water was released in unimaginable proportions at speeds of 60 miles per hour and hundreds of feet deep, creating forces great enough to shape the landscape we know today from here to Portland, Oregon.

The Kalispel tribe was the first to inhabit Sandpoint. With a moderate climate and bountiful game and food, they prospered from Montana to Eastern Washington.

White man reintroduced the horse to North America in the 16th century and by the 1700s the Kalispel tribe began to utilize the horse, taking them east of the Rocky Mountains, bringing contact with Plains Indians. The Kalispel adopted some of the habits and culture of these tribes, including hide-covered tipis and buffalo meat.

Despite their growing dependence on buffalo, the Kalispel remained adept at utilizing local resources. They caught fish and hunted a wide variety of game and birds. Women dug camas bulbs, baking them in large underground pits to render them suitable for winter storage. They also picked berries and wild fruits, drying large quantities for use during the cold months.

Another group that lived on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille were the Flathead Indians and several Salish, Kootenai and Pend O'Reilles bands lived in western Montana, northern Idaho, and eastern Washington in the early 1800s. The Flathead Indians of Montana built encampments on the shore of Lake Pend Oreille every summer, fished, made baskets of cedar, and collected huckleberries before returning to Montana in the fall. The encampments ended before 1930. Read More>>