A Personal Potlatch Connection

As I have mentioned in earlier blog posts, I have a particular affinity for the 'Potlatch Country' of North Idaho.  That interest originated with the railroads that once ran, and to a limited extent still run, in that region.  And then, as I have spent time there and learned more about it, I have come to find many other appealing aspects of that area.  I doubt that my circumstances will ever allow me to live there, but I certainly hope to return there frequently.

Although I first “discovered” the Potlatch country as a high school student in the early ‘80’s, the region seemed vaguely familiar as I began exploring it. When I told my parents about what I had found, I was surprised how well acquainted they were with it already. My mom especially, who had grown up in Spokane, mentioned our having visited Laird Park with her parents when I was much younger, and that got me to remembering...

My mother's parents, Ivan and Frances Brady, loved to travel and camp.  Grandma enjoyed camping with her family as a girl, and Grandpa had a particularly strong wanderlust.  He had spent his first forty years moving constantly around the West in search of new opportunities. Although he settled down in Spokane to raise his small family, travel was always part of their life, and that only increased when grandkids came into the picture.

My grandparents, Ivan and Frances Brady, were pretty adventurous.  This is from a trip I took with them to ride the Royal Hudson steam train out of Vancouver, BC in August, 1984.  My last trip with them, too, as Grandpa passed away the next spring after I arrived home from a year at college.

As the great symbol of freedom before the age of the Interstate, railroads always fascinated Grandpa, and that was something he certainly passed on to me.  But, almost everything about the West fascinated him, too.  He was always poking around in the hills for old mines or similar relics of the past, but he was also interested to see new things being built.  And, he always wanted to bring family along so we could share it with him.

So, somewhere in my memory, I had a faint recollection of taking a day trip with my mom, sister and grandparents to a campground somewhere.  It was raining, and I remember eating peanut butter and honey sandwiches while standing under a big tree to stay as dry as possible.  I also remembered a small river running across from the campsites.  And, I remembered that a few months later, my grandparents had spent a whole week at that same campground, and that my family had joined them for a few of those days.

That rainy picnic in 1971.  I'm the one copping an attitude with my pose.

A couple months after my first solo visit to Potlatch, I suggested that our family take a day trip down to Laird Park so I could see it again for myself.  It did seem familiar, and at the time I decided this must be the location I remembered picnicing and camping with my grandparents.  But there was also something about it that didn't seem quite right, and that nagged on me.

Many years later, I was looking for a place to camp while attending the 2012 Milwaukee Road Historical Association convention in Moscow.  I remembered reading about a small USFS campground a couple miles south of Helmer.  That would be close enough to Moscow, and staying there would be a new experience for me, as opposed to Laird Park where I’d stayed numerous times before.

As I drove down the hill from Highway 6 and through the gate of Little Boulder campground, I realized I’d hit personal pay dirt!  The main camping loop skirted the south bank of the Potlatch River, and there was no question in my mind this was the place I remembered visiting with my grandparents!  It gave me a great deal of satisfaction to re-discover this place.  Even more satisfaction came from learning that the campground had once been a Potlatch Lumber Co. logging camp!

Almost all the comforts of home in an old logging camp.

Fast forward to a few days ago:  I was leafing through my grandparents’ photo albums (they’ve passed on, and the albums are now in my possession) looking for something else, when serendipity struck.  Here was a snapshot from that rainy picnic, and several shots from their later week of camping at Little Boulder!!  Even better, the date stamp on the border of the photos gave me a good guess when these events took place.  My grandpa was also a prolific diary writer - a lot of what he wrote was pretty mundane, but he seldom missed a day between 1950 and his passing in 1985, and there are a lot of nuggets to be found in his notes.  I also have those diaries, and the photo dates directed me to his 1971 volume.

Leafing through the June entries, I found mention of our picnic trip.  All it says is that we drove down through St. Maries and Bovill to reach Helmer.  I can only speculate, but I’d like to think we returned by way of Potlatch.  So, even though I may have been oblivious to the passing scenery as a 4-year-old, I can now pinpoint my first trip through Potlatch country.  If I was awake for it, maybe someone pointed out the big sawmill in Potlatch as we drove past.

His entries a few weeks later indicate that my grandparents took their travel trailer down for a week leading up to my grandpa's birthday on the 4th of July.  He also noted that my family joined them for the last couple days - we didn't want to miss out on his birthday, of course.  Also, on a couple of those days, I went with them to visit Bovill and Elk River.

Dad was a fisherman, and he tried his luck in the Potlatch River when we arrived that June.
Grandpa's diary says his son-in-law didn't have any luck.

Of course, I would have loved to find photos of trains he might have taken on those trips, or at least a mention of them in the diary.  But, I’m not surprised I didn't.  As much as Grandpa loved them, I think railroads were still pretty mundane items to his generation.  He came from a time when railroad corporations seemed as solid as granite – they weren’t going anywhere, so there was no need to photograph their trains very often.  Also, diesels were seldom worth noting; to him, steam was the only “real” locomotion on the rails.

Through some other resources available to me today, I can actually speak to the presence or absence of trains in that area on those specific dates.  There had been a train running from Bovill to Potlatch the day of our picnic, although it probably ran early enough in the day that we would have missed seeing it.  Then, the week they camped there, a train ran between Bovill and Potlatch that Wednesday and Thursday (June 30th and July 1st), so Grandpa may have heard the engine's horn passing through Helmer a couple times.  However, because my family did not arrive until late on that Friday, I would not have seen any at all. 

Grandpa didn't take any pictures of trains on these trips, and I was too young to think about such things.  I have to settle for my friend Carl Sonner's photos of Milwaukee Road trains on the WI&M Railway - not far from Little Boulder Campground at Deary (above) and Avon (below)

None of this lessens my excitement to have so many pieces of my personal puzzle come together and help me to better understand my own connection to a favorite part of North Idaho.  More importantly, it’s one more reminder how great a legacy my grandparents left me – not just Grandpa’s interest in railroads, but also their combined love of travel, history and adventure.  I hope I can pass along equally significant traits and experiences to my kids, and to theirs when that time comes.