Signs celebrate Kootenai's creation

KOOTENAI—Steve Rigby stopped by because he forgot his glasses.

He was out for a walk earlier today in the grassy patch across the highway not far from his home and perused the new interpretive signs on the south side of Highway 200.

He came back for a better look.

The signs, placed by the Bonner County Historical Society, include a 1934 aerial photograph of the 14-acre patch of weeds, grass and wetlands that once, long ago, was the reason for Kootenai’s existance

It was the place in 1908 that the Northern Pacific Railroad chose as its division point between Paradise, Mont. and Sprague, Wash.

The Humbird Lumber Company built a mill here, the railroad constructed a station and the town of Kootenai sprang up nearby and incorporated in 1910.

Kootenai celebrates its centennial this year, one of the reasons the historical society placed the signs.

“The museum thought it was a good idea to show what was here about 100 years ago,” said museum volunteer Bob Camp. “It’s kind of a sending off for their centennial.”

Not far from the rail embankment edged by a clump of tall aspens and just off the south side of the highway the signs, erected with the help of a lot of local volunteers and businesses, highlight the history of the place.

“The sheep pens were right here,” Camp said.

Ranchers from eastern Washington shipped livestock to Kootenai in the spring. It was kept in large corrals before being herded to the green pastures of the Cabinet Mountains for summer forage.

At its height the city in the early part of last century included a three-story, 40-room hotel, dance halls, saloons and a bank.

Parts of Kootenai remain, but the mill, along with the railroad complex are gone.

“None of it is here anymore,” Camp said. “Nothing’s left.”

Rigby, who drove up on his 4-wheeler, lives in the same house where he grew up.

He points to it on the aerial photograph.

“I was told my garage is the oldest building in Kootenai,” he said.

When he is out walking he often finds chunks of concrete foundations left from the boomtown days, which lasted less than a decade, buried under clumps of brush or weed sprawl.

That’s when he returns to the interpretive signs to make sense of what he found.

The historical society owns five acres here along the highway. It has plans for an agricultural and mining museum complete with old machinery at the Kootenai site, president Barbara Botsch said.

Displaying old machinery at society headquarters in Sandpoint’s main park is prohibitive, she said.

“We’re out of space,” she said.

The plans include leaving the museum and research facility at the park, but expanding the exhibits to the field here along Highway 200, she said.

Rigby, who fancies himself a history buff and whose house is surrounded by items he bought at auctions, appreciates that.

“I like these,” he said. “It really interests me.”