A look inside the Pend Oreille County Museum

For thousands of years, the Kalispel Indians fished, hunted, and gathered along the Pend Oreille River. David Thomspon explored along the river in 1809. Fur traders and missionaries came next. Then came prospectors looking for gold. Homesteaders followed hoping to make farms. People traveled by horseback. Towns were started. Then steamboats carried people and goods up and down the river. Railroads came next. The larger trees were cut down and sold to sawmills for timber. Towns built churches, stores and schools. There were floods that covered the tops of buildings and large forest fires. Dams were built on the river. Power plants made electricity for the towns.