Bonners Ferry

Bonner’s Rope Ferry on the Kootenai

Bonners Ferry stands on the Kootenai River at the top of the north Idaho panhandle and is the county seat of Boundary County.^1,2,5 A 2009 historical society marker notes that Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific trains still run through the county on century-old roadbeds.⁶

The Kootenai people have lived for thousands of years in a homeland that spans Idaho, Montana and British Columbia.⁷ In 1808 David Thompson, a trader for the North West Company, explored the river, and on May 8, somewhere near the present town, his starving party met ten lodges of Indians.⁸ At first, Indians paddled gold miners rushing to Wild Horse in British Columbia across the river; then E.L. Bonner set up a proper ferry, and with its trading store it served the Wild Horse packtrains for many years.³ The state highway marker dates the rush to Wild Horse to 1863, but the National Register nomination for Fry’s Trading Post dates it to 1864.^3,9 On December 22, 1864, Edwin Bonner, together with R. A. Eddy and John Walton, obtained a ferry franchise from the Idaho legislature, and a series of ferrymen ran the business after him.⁹ Richard Fry, a Wild Horse miner, arrived in 1875, and in 1876 his brother Martin joined him in taking over the ferry and running a trading post on the north side of the river.⁹ Just before the Great Northern arrived, the outpost was described as “a store, and several wooden buildings, with the usual gang of loafers red and white, and a rope ferry.”⁹

Lead-Silver and the Great Northern

In 1882 the crossing became an operating base for the discovery of British Columbia’s large lead-silver district, and new Kootenay lead-silver discoveries brought the place back to life.⁹ Steamers reached the river in the 1880’s, the first of them a tiny boat dragged in overland, and the first post office opened in 1887.^3,5 A new townsite went up on the south side in 1888, and Fry’s post, which could not compete with its large new business district, was abandoned four years later.⁹ The Great Northern Railway arrived in 1892, and the town was incorporated in 1894.^3,5 On a June night in 1892, several hundred men gathered on Main Street and gave 48 Chinese men two hours to pack and leave town on a special Great Northern train made up of two boxcars and a caboose.¹⁰ The railroad brought new settlers, some of them leaving the logged-out Midwest, who arrived in rented box cars filled with their animals, farming equipment, and household goods.¹⁰ D.C. Corbin built the Spokane International Railway to carry British Columbia coal to eastern Washington, and its line from Spokane to Eastport was completed in October 1906.⁶

Power Plant, Diked Valley, and County Seat

Local traffic kept the ferry running, and it became a public, county-operated enterprise in 1902 before a major highway bridge replaced it.⁹ In 1902 a local pharmacist, J.F. Cook, installed a turbine on the Moyie River but never finished the project, and in 1905 the Newport Electric Light Company of Myrtle Creek supplied the city’s first electricity.¹¹ By 1917 the plant was over-taxed, and the city bought it and formed the Bonner Water and Light Department.¹¹ Logging, and the discovery that the climate and soil suited fruit growing, made the town a commercial and civic center for the northernmost region of Idaho, and it became the county seat when Boundary County was established in 1915.⁴ The river valley, once a series of lakes and tiny islands, was not reclaimed until 1922, when the area’s first drainage district was formed, and by the mid-1930s 13 drainage districts covered 35,000 acres.^2,5 In 1937 the state guide counted 1,418 people in Bonners Ferry, called it the center of an agricultural and lumbering area, and noted its own municipal power plant.² The population slipped to 1,345 by 1940, rose to a peak of 2,796 in 1970, and fell to 1,906 in 1980.⁵ Kootenai people who refused to leave their lands for a reservation took individual allotments around Bonners Ferry, and in 1974 the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho declared war on the United States to obtain a land base.⁷

The North Side School, the Post Office, and Fry’s Log Post

The brick North Side School opened on January 24, 1914, at a final cost of $15,000, and it was used as a school until June, 1990.⁴ After the Kootenai Valley Commercial Club spent a year working to secure a federal building, the post office went up between September 1937 and March 1938, and its nomination calls it one of the most imposing buildings in Bonners Ferry.⁵ The log building from Fry’s post still stands under two successive layers of siding, and its nomination calls it Bonners Ferry’s oldest structure.⁹