Traillink | TrailLink

Weldon Heyburn (1852–1912), who served as one of Idaho’s senators from 1903 until his death in 1912, never wanted this stretch of lakefront to be a state park—he wanted it to be a national park. He loved the forested valley where the St. Joe River met Lake Chatcolet, and thought it was one of the most beautiful places in the country. Heyburn wasn’t the only one who saw the land’s appeal. A 1912 article in the Wallace Miner gushed that it was “one of the beauty spots of northern Idaho … located on the shores of one of the state’s most beautiful lakes.” [1] That’s why Heyburn wanted it to be protected as a national park, which was a designation reserved for the best of the best, like Yellowstone to the southeast. National parks drew tourists and enriched state economies, while the federal government footed the bill for their maintenance. [2]

But Sen. Heyburn’s push for a national park in Idaho must have flummoxed and frustrated his progressive colleagues in Washington, D.C. Heyburn was a Republican and a strong proponent of states' rights, which pitted him against the more progressive faction of the party at that time, led by President Teddy Roosevelt (1901–1909). A lawyer by training, many of the clients in his Wallace-based practice were mining companies whose economic interests he protected. [3] For years, Heyburn had been sparring with Gifford Pinchot and the nascent U.S. Forest Service over their efforts to conserve U.S. forest lands. Pinchot and Roosevelt’s quest to set aside federal forest reserves was one of the progressive policies that Heyburn despised, because it prevented timber and mining companies from profiting from these lands. The Forest Service prohibited the large companies and individuals from the reserves who wanted to profit from logging or mining or farming. This created a rift between those who believed nature belonged to the public and those who saw nature as an essential means for achieving economic subsistence or financial gain. [4]

Ironically, at the very same time that Heyburn was antagonizing Pinchot, he sponsored a bill proposing that Congress approve the purchase of his beloved tract of Idaho lakefront for a national park, to be managed by the National Park Service. Why would he have made such a move? Historian Thomas Cox suggests that “Local boosterism (and perhaps a desire for a share from the national pork barrel)” may have caused Heyburn to “overcome his distrust of federal interference in Idaho.” [5] Heyburn also recognized that if he wanted this land to become a public park, it was now or never; it was only because of the allotment of the Coeur d’Alene reservation—the home of the Schitsu’umsh, or Coeur d’Alene, tribe—that the land was available for purchase.

In 1887, Congress had passed the Dawes Act enabling the government to divide up Native American reservation lands into 40–160 acre allotments; eligible Native American families and individuals could select their allotment, which would then be transferred to them as private property. Any unclaimed allotments could then be purchased from the government by non-Native settlers. [6] Although the Dawes Act passed in 1887, the government did not immediately implement it on every reservation; Congress did not authorize allotment on the Coeur d’Alene reservation until 1906. [7]

Allotment was not a benevolent policy to transfer property or wealth to Native Americans. [8] Allotment was explicitly intended to diminish the sovereignty that Native peoples had over their own lands, to force them to give up indigenous lifeways by breaking up their communities, and to invest them in the market economy through the transfer of private property. In reality, Native Americans had been socially and commercially engaged with settlers since the colonization of the Americas. From 1887 to 1934, allotment stripped 90 million acres of land from Native Americans' possession. [9]

Heyburn felt an urgency to put aside park land before the Schitsu’umsh had the opportunity to select their individual allotments in the spring of 1908, because if any picked lakeside tracts, it would make the area difficult for the public to access. Many people of the Schitsu’umsh Tribe supported Heyburn’s effort because, Cox writes, “one of the tribe's favorite fishing and hunting sites was more apt to be preserved if in a national park than if opened for individual settlement.” [10] Although Heyburn twice tried to get Congress to accept the area as a national park, there was an unwillingness to allocate the funding needed to maintain it. Congress instead agreed to set aside the tract and authorize the state of Idaho to purchase it from the Schitsu’umsh. Heyburn reluctantly accepted the change, and in 1911 Idaho acquired the land as its first state park. [11]

For the next 20 years, Heyburn State Park saw little use by the public. Besides the natural beauty, there wasn’t much there. Public facilities were not built until President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1933; the CCC put unemployed Idahoans to work on state and federal infrastructure projects, including CCC Company #1995 in Heyburn State Park. Between 1934 and 1941, Corps members built picnic shelters, toilets and trails at Plummer Point for the public to use and enjoy during their lakeside visits. The addition of these facilities increased the park’s appeal and popularity. The CCC structures are still standing at Plummer Point and are a great resting place along the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes. [12]

[1] “Will Give Title to Heyburn Park,” Wallace Miner (Wallace, Idaho), July 4, 1912, p. 1, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85007266/1912-07-04/ed-1/seq-1/.
[2] Thomas R. Cox, The Park Builders: A History of State Parks in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 16.
[3] Merle Wells, "Heyburn, Weldon Brinton (1852–1912),” in Howard R. Lamar, ed., The New Encyclopedia of the American West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
[4] Timothy Egan, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), 33–34, 50–52, 68–70.
[5] Cox, The Park Builders, 15.
[6] Ross R. Cotroneo and Jack Dozier, “A Time of Disintegration: The Coeur d’Alene and the Dawes Act,” Western Historical Quarterly 5, no. 4 (1974), 405–06. See also: Laura Woodworth-Ney, "Negotiating Boundaries of Territory and ‘Civilization': The Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation Agreement Councils, 1873–1889,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 94, no. 1 (Winter 2002/2003), 27– 41.
[7] Katherine G. Morrissey, Mental Territories: Mapping the Inland Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 86–92.
[8] Quoted in Steven Newcomb, "Dawes Act,” in Patrick L. Mason, ed., Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, 2nd ed. (Gale: 2013).
[9] Newcomb, “Dawes Act”; Peter C. Mancall, “General Allotment Act,” in Peter C. Mancall, ed., Encyclopedia of Native American History, 3rd ed. (Infobase Learning: 2011). See also, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock (Boston: Beacon Press, 2019), 48.
[10] Cox, The Park Builders, 15, 18.
[11] Cox, The Park Builders, 17–19; National Register of Historic Places, Plummer Point CCC Picnic and Hiking Area, Benewah County, Idaho, National Register #94001587. Hereafter NRHP.
[12] NRHP.

Discovering America: Reconnecting People and Places

The Great American Rail-Trail promises an all-new American experience. Through 12 states and the District of Columbia, the trail will directly serve nearly 50 million people within 50 miles of the route. Across the nation—and the world—only the limits of imagination will limit its use.

Learn More