Palouse National Forest

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The Palouse Forest Reserve and after March 4, 1907, the Palouse National Forest was established by Presidential Proclamation (34 U.S. Statutes at Large 3293) on March 2, 1907 and was one of President Theodore Roosevelt's Midnight forests, created before the federal law banning new forest reserves in six western states, including Idaho, became effective.

The conventional wisdom has the name 'palouse' being derived from the French term for the large treeless plain region in eastern Washington stretching into Idaho: the Palouse, a word meaning grassy spot or place. However, Boone says that the name could originate from the name of a major village of Palouse Indians, Palus, located at the confluence of the Palouse and Snake Rivers. 'Palus' is the Sachapin Indian word for "something sticking down in the water," in this case the something was a large rock, thought to be a beaver's heart, and which had an important religious significance for the Palouse Indians. [1]

The Palouse National Forest had its administrative headquarters in the town of Wallace, Idaho for its 15-month existence and was administered by the U.S. Forest Service with 194,404 acres (786.73 km2). [2] With the issuance of Executive Order 843 by President Roosevelt on June 26, 1908, with an effective date of July 1, 1908, the entire forest was absorbed by the Coeur d'Alene National Forest and the area ceased to be an independently administered national forest. The lands of the former Palouse National Forest were then administered as part of the Coeur d'Alene National Forest for three years before being combined with other lands to establish the St. Joe National Forest on July 1, 1911. The area of the former Palouse National Forest formed the western portion of the St. Joe National Forest. Once transferred in 1911, the area of the Palouse National Forest became the Palouse Ranger District of the St. Joe National Forest and is still considered part of the St. Joe National Forest. However, it has been administered by the Clearwater National Forest since the 1973 administrative merger of the Kaniksu National Forest, Coeur d'Alene, and St. Joe National Forests into the Idaho Panhandle National Forests. [3]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saint Joe River</span> Tributary of Coeur dAlene Lake in northern Idaho

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Pend Oreille National Forest was established by the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho on May 6, 1910 with 911,764 acres (3,689.78 km2) by the renaming of Pend d'Oreille National Forest, which in turn had been established on July 1, 1908 with 913,364 acres (3,696.25 km2) from Cabinet, Coeur d'Alene, Kootenai and Priest River National Forests. On September 30, 1933 most of the forest was transferred to Kaniksu National Forest and the remainder was transferred to Coeur d'Alene. The name was discontinued.

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Heyburn State Park is a public recreation area in the U.S. state of Idaho. It is located almost entirely in Benewah County, with a small portion extending into southern Kootenai County. The park was founded in 1908 and is the oldest state or provincial park in the Pacific Northwest. The park has 5,744 acres (23.2 km2) of land and 2,332 acres (9.4 km2) of water on three lakes: Benewah, Chatcolet, and Hidden. A dam constructed on the Spokane River in Post Falls in 1906 raised the level of Lake Coeur d'Alene, connecting it to the park's three lakes. The surface elevation of the lakes is 2,125 feet (648 m) above sea level. The park's year-round recreational opportunities include camping, boating, hiking, horseback riding, fishing, and picnicking.

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The Battle of Spokane Plains was a battle during the Coeur d'Alene War of 1858 in the Washington Territory in the United States. The Coeur d'Alene War was part of the Yakima War, which began in 1855. The battle was fought west of Fort George Wright near Spokane, Washington, between elements of the United States Army and a coalition of Native American tribes consisting of Kalispel, Palus, Schitsu'umsh, Spokan, and Yakama warriors.

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The Spokane and Inland Empire Railroad Company (S.&I.E.R.R.Co.) was an electrified interurban railway operating in Spokane, Washington and vicinity, extending into northern and central Idaho. The system originated in several predecessor roads beginning c. 1890, incorporated in 1904, and ran under its own name to 1929. It merged into the Great Northern Railway and later, the Burlington Northern Railroad, which operated some roads into the 1980s.

Idaho v. United States, 533 U.S. 262 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the United States, not the state of Idaho, held title to lands submerged under Lake Coeur d'Alene and the St. Joe River, and that the land was held in trust for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe as part of its reservation, and in recognition of the importance of traditional tribal uses of these areas for basic food and other needs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steamboats on Lake Coeur d'Alene</span> Steamboats on lake in Idaho, USA

Steam navigation on Lake Coeur d'Alene lasted from the 1880s to the 1930s. More steamboats operated on Lake Coeur d’Alene than on any other lake west of the Great Lakes. The high point of steam navigation was probably from 1908 to 1913. After that railroads, and increasingly automobile and truck traffic on newly built highways supplanted steam navigation, although some vessels continued to be operated until the mid-1930s.

References

  1. Boone, Lalia Phipps (1988), Idaho Place Names, a Geographical Dictionary, Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press|
  2. Land Areas of the National Forest System (shtml)
  3. Davis, Richard C. (September 29, 2005), National Forests of the United States (PDF), The Forest History Society