North Fork of the Clearwater River: The Almost Forgotten History

By Wendell M. Stark

The book is about the inhabitents that lived and worked and raised their family's on the river prior to the building of the dam. It starts with the Norhtern Pacific Railroad surveys. It then tells about a band of the Nez Perce Indians that lived in the upper regions of this river for hundreds of years before the white man came. It then talks about the miners and the trapers that found their way into the upper reaches of this river. Then came the home steaders when the area was opened up. The U. S. Forest Service taking controle of the vast amount of land and timber. The loggers that came to harvest the timber. The development of fire protection and finnaly how the river is used today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479765034

Wendell M. Stark

About the Author Wendell M. Stark is an avid outdoorsman with a great appreciation of the wilderness and all it has to offer. Raised on the banks of a river in a small town, Priest River, Idaho, he learned to love the outdoors at a very young age. He moved with his wife to Headquarters, Idaho, a small company town, where they raised two daughters. He spent many years working in the woods for Potlatch along the North Fork River. With a great love of fly fishing, he discovered the greatest fishing in Idaho along the upper reaches of the North Fork and was forever hooked.

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Copyright © 2013 by Wendell M. Stark.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

Project Background

Introduction

Chapter 1 North Fork River Logistics

Chapter 2 The Earliest Inhabitants

Chapter 3 Surveyors

Chapter 4 Trappers

Chapter 5 The Miners

Chapter 6 Homesteaders and Others

Chapter 7 Forgotten River Names and Places

Chapter 8 Clearwater National Forest

Chapter 9 Timber Harvesting

Chapter 10 Clearwater—Potlatch Timber Protection Association

A. B. Curtis, White Pines and Fires

Chapter 11 1961 to Present

Map North Fork of the Clearwater River Corridor

Developed Campgrounds along the North Fork

of the Clearwater River

Reference

Acknowledgments

About the Author

I wish to dedicate this book to my daughter, Jacqueline Ferne Chapman, for the many hours she put in proofreading the language and checking the spelling, also for the hours we spent on the phone with our computers, checking each and every chapter. I would also like to dedicate this book to my wife, Judy Ann Stark, for putting up with this for the two and a half years it took to gather all this information, going to different locations to talk to people and collecting photographs and my hundreds of hours in my dungeon in front of the computer.

Project Background

I have always had a strong interest in history of all types, but my strongest interest is in the history of the area in which I live. Because of this, I decided to share the knowledge that I have gained over the years of the North Fork River corridor.

Through forty years of employment with Potlatch, I spent a great deal of time exploring different areas of this vast drainage whenever I had the chance. This included from Camp T downstream to the Little North Fork River and up it as far as I could get. I was lucky enough to see the original Boehls Cabin that was on the south side of the river. I also made trips up the Finn Cabin Road to the top of Smith Ridge and down to Cluges Jump-Off. This took me past the Finn Cabin, which I’m sorry to say I never took a photograph of. Then down the ridge through Spaces Loop and back down to Perd Hughs homestead on the river, across the Benton Creek Bridge and back to Camp T.

Over the years, roads were extended up the river, and during the spring of 1993, a group of us traveled to Fish Lake, a high mountain lake along the Idaho and Montana state line. The purpose was to look at the trail that was in bad need of repair. There was also a need to clean up the garbage that was around the lake from campers that didn’t seem to care how they left their campsites. Because of their indifference, the Forest Service had threatened to close all motorized access to this pristine lake.

While working on cleaning up the area, I was told a little bit of the history of the lake, which planted the seed to research its history.

Initially this book started out as the documentation of the early history of Fish Lake, as most people were unaware that at one time there was a District Ranger Station located there. However, once I started doing the research, I once again began thinking about all the events that have taken place during the many years of life along the North Fork River corridor. These thoughts are what eventually led me to include the history of the entire North Fork River corridor. This will not be in a story outline, but as the events took place in time that can be documented and in chronological order. I will try to only list events that are documented and not just hearsay.

Introduction

Growing up around old lumberjacks, I would listen to their stories for as long as they would tell them. After high school, I tired of the city life and longed for the mountains. I have strong ties to the timber industry through my ancestors who arrived in the United States of America in 1853. Upon their arrival, they went directly into the timber industry in the wilderness of Wisconsin.

During part of my early years of growing up, we lived on the banks of the Priest River in Priest River, Idaho. This was during the period when they were still driving logs down the river in the spring. One of my fondest memories was of our neighbor, an elderly Finlander by the name of Henry Lund, who was a retired river pig, which is what they were referred to as, when they spent many years on the log drive. I would sit at his house for hours listening to the stories about the log drives.

In 1958, while going to high school in Priest River, I started my first logging experience at the age of seventeen working for George and Eilene Bailey, which was a family I had adopted. In the summer of 1959, after graduation, I went to work for the Forest Service in a Blister Rust Camp out of a little one-building town called Tiger, in Washington State. The next year I felled timber for a gyppo-logger out of Metaline, Washington.

I came to Clearwater County in the spring of 1961, landing in Elk River, Idaho, where my mother and stepfather, Ferne and Ivar Gullickson, were living. My stepfather was a pole maker in the area. Upon my arrival, I heard that a job could be had at one of the Potlatch Forest Incorporated river camps. I hitched a ride with a new acquaintance that was supposed to report to work there. Upon arriving at Potlatch’s Camp T (the most northern river camp on the North Fork of the Clearwater River), I was hired on the spot by the camp foreman, Charles Red McCollister.

My first three years of employment with the company was spent in or around this camp. The time I spent in camp was a lesson in history. I would listen to the stories of the lumberjacks who worked for many years in this area. They would talk about the log drives and about the few people who spent most of their life on the river. I grew to become lifelong friends with all of them; however, sadly, most are now gone. Listening to their stories is what initially sparked an interest in the history of what all had happened in that area.

At that period of time, the roads were few and far between in the North Fork River corridor. A road system came to the river from the Potlatch Company town of Headquarters and another from the town of Elk River. The only road on the river itself came from Elk River to the mouth of the Little North Fork River, upstream past Camp T, and then upstream to the Butte Creek Log Landing. I spent many weekends exploring the North Fork from Gyppo Creek up to the Butte Creek log landing, which was as far as the road went upriver. I also spent a lot of time up the Little North Fork. Here, there was a road that went upriver as far as Cedar Creek, which it crossed, and then went up the Cedar Creek drainage to another Potlatch logging camp called Spike Camp.

My first experience on the river above Butte Creek came after my new wife, Judy, and I moved to Headquarters from Elk River in 1964. After becoming acquainted with some of the local families that lived there, I was told of the great fishing on the upper portion of the North Fork River. I was also told that the road to this area was not the best of roads but could be driven in a car during the dry part of the summer. The road took you over some ridges and down Beaver Creek, coming out just below the US Forest Service Canyon Ranger Station. One weekend, we set out on an adventure, arriving at the Canyon Ranger Station after a couple of hours. This was the first time I saw this part of the river and, at that time it, was as far as you could go upstream, as this is where the road ended. As the years passed, a road was built that eventually went through to Superior, Montana, with a fork that went back to Pierce, Idaho. It was then that I fell in love with this river, which is known to have the greatest fly fishing in the state of Idaho.

Since that first trip into the North Fork River corridor, a great deal has changed over the years. It was opened up to the homesteaders, the miners looking for wealth, the fur trappers, the Forest Service, and the timber industry. Some of the changes were good, and some, in my opinion, were not so good. Several times over the years, while fly fishing alone on the river on a warm day, I would sit on a rock next to the water, listening and wondering what it was like before the intrusion of the white man.

Chapter 1

North Fork River Logistics

According to archeological studies that were done, the Clearwater Plateau was never glaciated because the Canadian ice sheet only extended to the edge of the plateau. There were, however, what was called ice caps that filled depressions in the landscape during different time periods. The ice caps lingered on for hundreds of years before they also melted with time. These are some of the places where we now have our high mountain lakes.

The development of the North Fork River drainage system occurred during the Pleistocene period. The increase of the glacial melting supplied the water energy that created the downcutting of the valleys below the glaciers. It now flows through majestic canyon lands, as a crystal-clear steam. It has flowed for thousands of years, free of any obstacles other than the ones that occurred through natural ways over time.

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North Fork River

(Wendell M. Stark Collection)

Lying within the Bitterroot Mountain Range, which divides Idaho and Montana, a vast amount of it is as it once was. The river was carved out of the mountains by the Ice Age, which melted some thousands of years ago. This majestic crystal-clear river lies almost in its entirety within the boundaries of Clearwater County, in North Central Idaho—that is, except for approximately three to four miles, which is in the Southern end of Shoshone County at Township 39N, Range 11E, Section 8.

The river’s journey begins in the mountains of Shoshone County, as nothing more than a trickle from a spring in a valley. The valley at its beginning is a wide open meadow called Chamberlain Meadow. In a short distance, it changes into a canyon that is relatively narrow, being less than a mile wide from ridgetop to ridgetop, and in places over a thousand feet in depth.

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Chamberlain Meadows

(Wendell M. Stark Collection)

The small streams that join in the upper reaches near the beginning of the river are Graves Creek, Boundary Creek, Gulch Creek, Dill Creek, Rubble Creek, Vanderbilt Creek, Meadow Creek, and finally, Lake Creek, which is the largest of these streams. At this point, it is at a location called the Cedars. Within this large stand of ancient cedar trees is also the northernmost US Forest Service Camp Ground on the North Fork River.

At the point of the head of Black Canyon, it now has gained considerable more volume as it flows through the narrowest of canyons. Black Canyon derives its name because in the upper region of the canyon, it is so narrow that very little sunlight penetrates to the river channel below the ridgetops. In some places, the walls of the canyon are almost perpendicular to the river. Some of these ridges are barren rocky crags, while others are densely forested with white fir, red fir, white pine, cedar, hemlock, and subalpine fir trees. In its journey through the canyon, it has at the lower end a few developed wide flat bars and gentler slopes that reach the ridgetops.

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Black Canyon

(Wendell M. Stark Collection)

On leaving the mouth of the canyon on its journey southwest, it is fed by many small and major streams. The first of these is a wide major stream of volume called Kelly Creek, which lies within another relatively narrow canyon. From here, the other streams that feed into the river are Cold Springs Creek, Fourth of July Creek, Upper Weitas Creek, Orogrande Creek, Washington Creek, Quartz Creek, Skull Creek, Beaver Creek, Isabella Creek, Butte Creek, Benton Creek, the Little North Fork (the largest of the streams), Robinson Creek, Elmberry Creek, Elkberry Creek, Lower Weitas Creek, Silver Creek, Reeds Creek, Cranberry Creek, Dicks Creek, Freeman Creek, and Canyon Creek. It finally ends its long journey entering into the main Clearwater River at Ahsahka, Idaho.

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Kelly Creek Canyon

(Wendell M. Stark Collection)

This ends the majestic journey that started from a mere trickle in the mountains, traveling approximately 120.43 miles, and becoming a major river. A river teeming with rainbow, cutthroat, and Dolly Varden trout, as well as a spawning ground for steelhead and salmon.

The North Fork River is home to elk, deer, bears, bobcats, mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, badgers, beavers, and river otters. It is also the home for a great number of birds that have nested in the lower elevations and in the high mountains. Some of these birds have spent their entire life span within the river corridor, and others migrate in and out during different seasons of the year.

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Elk crossing the North Fork

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Elk herd in higher elevation

(Wendell M. Stark Collection)

However, over the years, there were many catastrophic fires that decimated the mountains. The fires were so intense that there was no longer any food left for the birds and animals that lived there. The worst of the documented fires were in 1885, 1887, 1889, 1910, 1919, 1920, 1925, 1929, 1931, 1936, 1945, 1951, and 1959. The worst of these fires was in 1910 and 1919, which destroyed thousands and thousands of acres of forested lands.

In vast areas, elk and deer became scarce at that time because of the lack of browse and grasses that they needed to survive on. There was, however, what could be called a good thing that happened because of the fire aftermath. With time, as the burned-over ground started to green up, it created much-needed young browse and tender grasses, which the game needed, and once again the game started to return. In 1932, elk were brought into Bovill, Idaho, by the railroad to help with their population. They were unloaded and taken by truck to a Potlatch Company barn and unloaded. Julius Crane, who was there to watch, said that one of the cow elk bolted and ran out of the opposite end of the barn, jumped a creek, and broke its back. They had to shoot the animal, but this was the only mishap that occurred. These elk, in time, migrated into the far reaches of the North Fork, which increased the population considerably. As time passed, roads encroached into this beautiful river valley, and timber harvesting flourished for many years.

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Elk that was unloaded from the railroad in Bovill, Idaho

(Gary Carlin Collection)

When the Flood Control Act of 1962 was passed, there were several locations on the North Fork that were selected to possibly build a dam on. The site that was eventually picked was at Bruce’s Eddy, and it was to be called the Bruce’s Eddy Dam. This was, however, changed to Dworshak Dam to honor Idaho senator Henry C. Dworshak, who helped to get this project going. Orofino mayor Albert B. Bert Curtis and Senator Henry C. Dworshak testified before a congressional committee in Washington DC in 1953.

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Left, Senator Henry C. Dworshak; right, Albert B Curtis

(Clearwater Historical Society Collection)

In 1966, with the preparation of the dam’s location, the riverbanks upstream were prepared, and the clearing began. Dworshak Dam was completed in 1972, being 717 feet high, with a length of 3,287 feet. On its completion, it has a generating capacity of 400 megawatts, with two spillway gates. A total of 6,500,000 cubic yards of concrete was poured to create the dam.

The pool behind the dam created a reservoir stretching 54 miles up the North Fork River. On its completion, it had the distinction of being the highest straight axis concrete dam in the Western Hemisphere, with only two other dams exceeding it in height.

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Dworshak Dam construction

(Clearwater Historical Society Collection)

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Dworshak Dam on completion

(Wendell M. Stark Collection)

Included with the construction of the new dam, a new bridge was also approved, which would be constructed just below what is now called Dent Acres. The bridge is 17 miles up the North Fork, spanning the reservoir to accommodate access for the many homes and the small logging town of Elk River, Idaho, to Orofino, Idaho. This bridge was a suspension bridge, and the construction was started in the early 1970s. The bridge is 1,550 feet long, rising 520 feet above the original river channel and completed in 1971, The Dent Bridge was named after Charles and Katherine Dent, who homesteaded the land on the west end. It is also referred to, by the locals, as the Little Golden Gate because of the design.

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Dent Little Golden Gate Bridge

(Wendell M. Stark Collection)

Also included was a new bridge farther up the reservoir that is called the Granddad Bridge. It was named after Granddad Creek, which was the bridge’s location.