Kootena County history

The population is about twenty-three thousand. It was on the site now covered by the city of Coeur d'Alene that Father DeSmet, in 1842, met the Indians and introduced among them the Catholic religion.

The American survey team established a supply depot at the site that would in 1863 be a ferry landing of Thomas Forde.

On December 22, 1864, the settlement became the first official county seat for the newly formed Kootenai County.

In 1865, the first steamboat, the Mary Moody, to ply the waters of Lake Pend Oreille was built at the popular river crossing.

In the spring of 1879 the fort was regularly established and garrisoned.

The first part of this unnamed territory to be organized was Latah county, which was created in 1880.

The county organization was completed in the month of July, 1881, and in August George B. Wonnacott, auditor and recorder, moved his store to Rathdrum, which had the effect of also moving the county seat to that point.

For several years after the establishing of the fort the place was merely a trading post, but during the years 1882-3, when the mines in Shoshone county began to be known, it became a thriving village and an outfitting point for the mines.

Coeur d'Alene did not become aroused to the fact of her despoliation until 1885, when she endeavored, through the board of commissioners, to again lay hands on the county seat, on the plea that it had never been legally established at Rathdrum.

Agriculture was given an impetus by the opening to settlement of the Coeur d'Alene Indian reservation in 1909-10.

Once comprising most of the western Panhandle, the county’s present boundaries were established in 1915, following the formation of Benewah County to the south.