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- Recreation
- St. Maries, located on the St. Joe River, offers some of the finest outdoor recreation opportunities available anywhere. The St. Joe River Valley has a well-deserved reputation as being one of the finest elk hunting areas in the United States. For that reason, hunters from throughout the nation travel to St. Maries every year to take advantage of this area's large and growing elk herd.
- Besides being one of the nation's premier elk-hunting areas, the St. Maries area offers much more. The St. Maries, St. Joe, Coeur d'Alene and Spokane rivers combine with Lake Coeur d'Alene (pronounced CORE-DA-LANE) to provide one of the finest boating opportunities available anywhere. The fact that this vast water system is set in some of the country's most beautiful scenery makes this system unparalleled. Idaho's largest state park, Heyburn, on the southern end of Lake Coeur d'Alene, is only six miles from the city limits. Heyburn includes three lakes interconnected by the St. Joe River, the highest navigable river in the world.
Click to Enlarge- Recognizing the abundance of this area's resources, the Forest Service has invested in improving its recreation sites and campgrounds in the St. Joe River area. The National Forest offers several hundred miles of hiking trails. Historic Marble Creek highlights early 1900s logging camps, steam donkeys and railroad trestles. Rock-hounds can dig for the Star Garnet, found only in Idaho and India.
- Adult recreation leagues, including a softball complex owned by the adult softball association, complement other recreation activities. The city's challenging, panoramic 9-hole golf course is on par with any fine golf course anywhere. The city's parks and tennis courts complement the local bowling alley to provide residents with complete recreational facilities.
- Geography:
- Benewah County's east side is largely mountainous, where logging is the predominant industry. The west side consists of rolling hills and agriculture is the primary industry.
- Four-fifths of the county is forested, and one fifth of the county's landbase is in cropland. Major waterways include the St. Joe River, the St. Maries River and the lower portion of Couer d' Alene Lake and its "chain lakes".
- CLIMATE
Click to Enlarge- St. Maries enjoys a temperate climate with only rare extremes in either temperature or precipitation. The figures provided below are based on a thirty-year climate history of St. Maries.
- January average temperature: 28.6 degrees
- July average temperature: 67.5 degrees
- Annul precipitation: 30.49"
- Annual snowfall: 59.5"
- History
- It was almost 100 years ago that Joseph Fisher decided that the junction of the St. Maries and St. Joseph rivers would be a good place for a sawmill. He chose the spot because there was good transportation and lots of timber.
- Timber and transportation have remained the principal reasons for the existence of St. Maries. Transportation improved and so did the distance that logs could be economically transported to the mills of the area.
- After the turn of the century, the city became incorporated. By then, two larger mills had been built and the steamboats which plied the St. Joe and Coeur d'Alene Lake provided cheap, rapid transportation. The coming of the transcontinental Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad in 1909, plus the opening of the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation to homesteading provided stimuli for further growth in the first decade and a half. The Milwaukee Road pushed a branch line south and east to Elk River and numerous narrow gauge logging railroads criss-crossed the area.
- World War I increased the demand on the lumber industry. In spite of the tremendous loss of timber in the Fire of 1910, there was still plenty of virgin stands to meet the demands of the sawmills.
- The Great Depression was a severe blow to the area, just as it was to the rest of the world. Sawmills shut down and there was very little work in the woods. In the late 1930s, just before the Reconstruction Finance Administration was about to auction off the last large mill in the area, the people of St. Maries rallied to help provide the capital to save the mill and get it opened again as the St. Maries Lumber Company --- just in time to meet the rising demand of the re-armament time of the late 1930s.
- World War II years were all-out production years and the decade following saw the demand for lumber continuing into the late 1950s. The three recessions of the 1950s put the local economy on a roller-coaster until 1961 when the St. Maries Lumber Company, the largest employer and biggest mill in the area, burned.
Click to Enlarge- The people of the area rallied again, forming the Benewah County Development Corporation, which took advantage of federal assistance to get a plywood mill built on the site of the lumber mill. The plywood mill has been expanded several times and came under the ownership of Potlatch Corporation which operates it as part of its St. Maries Complex, which manufactures plywood, dimension lumber and wood chips.
- In that same period, the development corporation helped finance the beginning of what is now the Rayonier complex in Plummer. In addition to Rayonier, Regulus Stud Mill was opened in St. Maries, thus providing a market and milling for tree sizes which were previously unsalable.
- During all these years, the usual accompaniments of growth appeared --- schools, churches, hospital, tradesmen, skilled and professional people. The beautiful country, recreational opportunities, wildlife and pace of living have attracted an extraordinary number of talented people to the area who prefer and choose to live here.
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- Besides being one of the nation's premier elk-hunting areas, the St. Maries area offers much more. The St. Maries, St. Joe, Coeur d'Alene and Spokane rivers combine with Lake Coeur d'Alene (pronounced CORE-DA-LANE) to provide one of the finest boating opportunities available anywhere. The fact that this vast water system is set in some of the country's most beautiful scenery makes this system unparalleled. Idaho's largest state park, Heyburn, on the southern end of Lake Coeur d'Alene, is only six miles from the city limits. Heyburn includes three lakes interconnected by the St. Joe River, the highest navigable river in the world.
