Board defers review of Lochsa remarks
LOREN BENOIT/Press University of Idaho archaeology graduate student Caroline Herritt places dirt on a color sheet to record soil changes near a blacksmith shop Wednesday afternoon at the old Pen d'Oreille City at Button Hook Bay.
SANDPOINT — The Idaho Historic Sites Review Board will not be taking public comments on a proposal to list the Lochsa River corridor on the National Register of Historic Places when it meets here on Saturday.
The board, which meets annually to consider nominations to the national register, was slated to consider public comments that were gathered at well-attended meeting in Grangeville earlier this month, but deferred the matter to a future meeting this spring. Representatives of the Idaho State Historical Preservation Office told the Lewiston Tribune that the matter was being deferred due to the magnitude of concern expressed during the meeting over the listing of the Lochsa River corridor in Idaho and Clearwater counties, the paper reported.
Although assurances were made that the listing would not affect the public, the Tribune reported that those assurances did little to assuage concerns that the designation would affect private landowners, recreation and commerce within the 763,350-acre area.
The Nez Perce Tribe is nominating the corridor for listing on the register as a Traditional Cultural Property.
“For the Nez Perce Tribe, the Lochsa River TCP continues to be a significant, heavily-used landscape connected to the Nez Perce since time immemorial. Through the millennia, Nez Perce peoples regularly traveled, subsisted, and lived within the lands of the TCP, and through these activities, established gathering and hunting grounds, fishing holes, spiritual and cultural places, ceremonial sites, legend sites, and extensive, interconnected trail systems,” the tribe said in its application.
But the proposed listing was met with skepticism and a suspicion that it would place ratchets that could be used to restrict access, land use and commerce.
The board is slated to revisit the matter in March, according to the Tribune.
On the board’s agenda for this Saturday is a draft nomination for the Pen d’Oreille Archaeological Site on Lake Pend Oreille, a former settlement site that served as a Gold Rush-era transportation hub.
The board’s meeting starts at 1 p.m. at the East Bonner County Library at the corner of Cedar and Division.
Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.