Idaho Panhandle National Forests

The Idaho Panhandle National Forests cover about two and a half million acres across the top of Idaho, spilling a little into Montana and Washington -- big-timber country of western redcedar and hemlock, deep blue lakes like Pend Oreille (the deepest in Idaho), and the old silver-mining towns of the Coeur d'Alene country. It still carries the scars of the Great Fire of 1910, one of the largest wildfires in American history, where a ranger named Ed Pulaski saved most of his crew by holding them in a mine tunnel while the flames roared over. Cool bonus: at Emerald Creek you can dig for rare star garnets and keep what you find -- long billed as one of only two public digs on Earth, the other in India.

The place

The Idaho Panhandle National Forests sit at the very top of Idaho, in the narrow neck of the state, with slivers reaching into Montana and Washington. They are really three old forests -- the Coeur d'Alene, the Kaniksu, and the St. Joe -- brought under one administration in 1973 and run as a single unit ever since. This is wet, green, big-timber country: some of the only inland rainforest in North America grows in its sheltered valleys, where western redcedar and hemlock stand tall and mossy. Deep lakes, old mining towns, and the Selkirk and Coeur d'Alene mountains fill out the rest. It rains and snows a lot up here, and it shows.

History

North Idaho is old mining and logging country. The Coeur d'Alene district -- the 'Silver Valley' around Wallace and Kellogg -- grew into one of the richest silver-mining areas in the world, having given up well over a billion ounces of silver over its lifetime, though that boom left a long environmental hangover the region is still cleaning up. The forest's defining event, though, was fire. The Great Fire of 1910, often called the 'Big Burn,' swept across roughly three million acres of Idaho and Montana in about two days of August wind, much of it right here. During the fire a ranger named Ed Pulaski herded his panicking crew into an abandoned mine tunnel near Wallace and held them there -- at gunpoint, by some accounts -- until the flames passed, saving most of their lives. He is remembered in the 'Pulaski,' the combination axe-and-hoe tool wildland firefighters still carry today. The three forests that make up the Panhandle were joined under a single administration in 1973.

Wildlife & plants

White-tailed deer are everywhere up here, along with elk, moose, and mountain goats on the high rock. Black bears are common -- far more common than most visitors realize. The northern edge of the forest, in the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak country near the Canadian border, is genuine grizzly habitat, home to two of the small, threatened grizzly populations still hanging on in the lower 48, though an encounter is rare and a black bear is far more likely. Gray wolves and mountain lions range here too. This was also the last corner of the lower 48 to hold wild mountain caribou; the tiny South Selkirk herd dwindled over the years and the last animal was moved to British Columbia in 2019, so they are gone from the U.S. side now -- a quiet loss the country still remembers. In the streams you will find native westslope cutthroat and bull trout, and the big lakes hold kokanee and lake trout.

Notable features

Lake Pend Oreille, which the forest wraps around, is Idaho's largest lake and its deepest -- more than a thousand feet down -- so deep and quiet that the U.S. Navy runs an acoustic research station on it at Bayview, testing large scale-model submarines far from any ocean. Priest Lake, to the northwest, is ringed by old-growth cedar and state and forest land. The Selkirk and Coeur d'Alene mountains give the forest its backbone, with the west edge of the Cabinets and the Scotchman Peaks along the Montana line. The 'Shadowy St. Joe' River winds through the southern country, long billed as one of the highest navigable rivers in the country. And tucked in the wet valleys are groves of ancient western redcedar -- Settlers Grove near Murray on the Idaho side, and the Roosevelt Grove of Ancient Cedars just over the line in Washington, reached from the Priest Lake side.

Cool to know

• The Emerald Creek Garnet Area is long billed as one of only two places on Earth -- the other is in India -- where the public can dig for rare star garnets, deep-red crystals that show a little star of light when polished. You reserve a dig, wash the gravel, and keep what you find.
• Lake Pend Oreille is so deep and so quiet that the U.S. Navy has tested scale-model submarines there since the 1950s, hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, at its Acoustic Research Detachment in Bayview.
• The Pulaski -- the axe-and-hoe tool every wildland firefighter carries -- is named for Ed Pulaski, a ranger who saved most of his crew during the Great Fire of 1910 by holding them in a mine tunnel near Wallace while the fire roared over.
• The Great Fire of 1910 burned roughly three million acres in about two days -- one of the largest wildfires in American history -- and much of it happened on these forests. The scale of it shaped how the whole country fought fire for the next century.
• Sheltered valleys here grow one of the only inland temperate rainforests in North America -- lush western redcedar and hemlock, more like the coast than the Rockies, fed by wet Pacific air that makes it over the mountains.
• The historic downtown of Wallace, deep in the Silver Valley, is listed in full on the National Register of Historic Places -- a whole town preserved from the silver-boom days.