Event to commemorate Thompson's trek
On Oct. 14, the public, students and history buffs are invited to a once in a lifetime opportunity to participate in a historical event to take place from noon to 1 p.m. at the David Thompson monument located just east of town on Highway 200 in Thompson Falls.
To commemorate Thompson’s first visit to the area, members of the Thompson Falls Brigade of fur trade re-enactors will be presenting readings from Thompson’s journals and demonstrating some of the skills necessary for the survival of he and his men.
Two hundred years ago, on Oct. 14, 1809, North West Company fur trader-explorer-surveyor David Thompson first laid eyes on what is now called Thompson’s Prairie and where the town of Thompson Falls would eventually be located. Following weeks of hardship – and facing starvation on several occasions — he spent a single night in a small camp located somewhere along the west bank of Thompson River.
Having left several members of his fur trading brigade to build a small trading post near what is now Hope, he had made his way up the Clark’s Fork River on his way to meet his clerk, James McMillan on the Kootenai River a few miles east of Libby. McMillan was bringing canoes loaded with trade goods to be used in obtaining beaver and other valuable furs and dried meat. Recognizing that this prairie would be a ideal spot for another post, he hid all the gear he would not be needing during the next few weeks in a cache before continuing his trek through country yet unexplored by Europeans.
Finding his way back to the Kootenai River rendezvous spot with McMillan despite his incompetent native guide, he and his men, now including McMillan and his canoeists, retraced Thompson’s original coarse down the Kootenai River to a spot just west the town of Bonners Ferry, ID. From there McMillan’s cargo was transferred to horses and packed over sometimes elusive trails back to the location of what he would call Kullyspel House near Hope. Leaving a supply of trade goods there, he once again headed up the river to the tributary that would eventually bear his name - Thompson River.
On Nov. 9, 1809, he arrived back at his old campsite. Nearby he would build his second post in this new country. It would be called Saleesh House after the native people he found camped and traveling through the area along the centuries-old Road to the Buffalo.
History buffs and students should take advantage of this bicentennial celebration to learn more about David Thompson and the early European exploration and settlement of Sanders County, Northwestern Montana, Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington.
For more information, please contact either Jennifer Fielder (406-827-7777) or Ted Hoglund (406-827-1937) of the Thompson Falls Brigrade.
Carl Haywood is a member of the Thompson Falls Brigade in Thompson Falls, Mont.