From Little Falls to Major Power Producer:
A Brief History of the Post Falls Dam
The Post Falls Dam has stoically served North Idaho for over 100 years and is arguably one of the greatest social and geographical influences in the region today. To appreciate the history of the dam, it is important to start at the beginning, before the dam was built, even before there was a Spokane River or a Lake Coeur d’Alene.
Before Lake Coeur d’Alene existed, the St. Joe River ran through the present lakebed northward and up through the Rathdrum Prairie before turning west and into the Spokane Valley. About 15,000 years ago, during the peak of the last glacial period, huge glaciers covered much of British Columbia. This ice, which was almost 4,000 feet thick, unimaginably covered all but the highest mountain peaks. The glacier slowly crept down into North Idaho, stopping just north of Coeur d’Alene (Wuerthner, 30, 32).
Ice dams in the Clark Fork area that backed up Glacial Lake Missoula actually caused some of the largest floods known to man. As ice will float, these ice dams would periodically rise up and burst, catastrophically flooding the Rathdrum Prairie, eastern Washington and into northern Oregon. Locally, these floods brought in glacial till and deep deposits of outwash that obliterated the St. Joe River once running through the Rathdrum Prairie. The southernmost edge of these deposits terminated where Coeur d’Alene exists today, damming the old St. Joe River and creating Lake Coeur d’Alene (Alt and Hyndman, 73). The new lake received the entire flow of the Coeur d’Alene and St. Joe Rivers, more than could be absorbed through the gravel deposits, thereby causing the lake to overflow and seek a new course, now known as the Spokane Ri...
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..., Edward J. Kowrach, and Thomas E. Connolly. Saga of the Coeur D'Alene Indians: an Account of Chief Joseph Seltice. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon, 1990. Print.
Shiach, William S., John M. Henderson, and Harry B. Averill. An Illustrated History of North Idaho: Embracing Nez Perces, Idaho, Latah, Kootenai and Shoshone Counties, State of Idaho. [S.l.]: Western Historical Pub., 1903. Print.
Singletary, Robert. Kootenai Chronicles: a History of Kootenai County. Coeur D'Alene, ID: Museum of North Idaho in Cooperation with Coeur D'Alene, 1995. Print.
"Spokane River Hydroelectric Project." Spokane River Project Hydro Relicensing. Avista Utilities. Web. 27 Feb. 2011.
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Wuerthner, George. North Idaho's Lake Country. Helena, MT: American & World Geographic Pub., 1995. Print.
Glacial Lake Peterborough had many attributing spillways attached to it, feeding meltwater and sediment from the ice margin and or other glacial lakes. Much of the sediment that was deposited in Glacial Lake Peterborough came from either from the stagnant ice blocks located on the Oak Ridges moraine or from the Lake Algonquin drainage system. Much of the deposition in this lake was dominated by sediment stratification, which may have been largely influenced by thermal stratification. As a result of thermal stratification occurring in this glacial lake sediment inputs were greatly influenced depending on the different sediment densities between the lake bottom water to that of the incoming meltwater and if the inflow density was less/more than the bottom water than the lake water bottom, than new transport and depositional paths were created
There are three dams directly on the Genesee River, one at the south end of the park and two at the north end (Fish, n.d.). According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the dam at the south end of the park is the Portageville Dam, which was built for irrigation and affects 45.16 miles of river. The Portageville Dam is not documented on the cu...
Epple J. C. (1970). Custer’s battle of the Washita and A history of the Plains Indian Tribes
The one feature common to the Hoover Dam, The Mississippi river and the three gorges dam is that they all tried to control nature’s swings, specifically in the form of flooding. Before the Hoover dam was built, the Colorado river “used to flood spectacularly…but after 1900 the Colorado provoked a vehement response” (Pg 177). The response was simple, but large. The U.S. built several large dams, including the Hoover dam, on the Colorado to decrease its flooding and increase power and irrigation. Unfortunately, just as human control of the Colorado’s flooding increased, its organisms and habitats were detrimentally influenced, and the water became more and more salinated.
As dams became old and upkeep costs rose many were torn down. This allowed the river to flow freely again and the salmon population increased by 20%. It was discovered that the best way to increase the diminishing salmon population was to simply restore the rivers to their original state. In 2008, a judge ordered for the Columbia and Snake River dams to spill water, allowing the rivers to flow as they would naturally. This water flow allowed the salmon to swim along the currents, as they would have once done
Charles Wilson Hackett, Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermin’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1942), Volume 2: 245–49.
West, Elliott, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, (University Press of Kansas,
Banks, D., Erodes, R. (2004). Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. Ojibwa Warrior. Retrieved January 20, 2005, from http://www.oupress.com/bookdetail.asp?isbn=0-8061-3580-8
Castillo, Edward D. “Short Overview of California Indian History.” California Native Americans Heritage Commission. April 12, 2012.
This book was written by Margaret Carrington (1831-1870), the wife of the Commanding Officer Colonel Henry B. Carrington, at Fort Philip Kearny. This novel was written from her own journal about her time spent traveling to the outpost up to her return to Fort Laramie. The book reads initially as a guide to prospective travelers on the Virginia City road, and finishes in the same fashion. In between are her first hand accounts of the troubles experienced at Fort Kearny between eighteen sixty-six and eighteen sixty-seven. The years are significant because miners were responding to the news that gold had been discovered in Montana. The resulting influx of prospectors forced the United States government to deal with the Sioux Indians in order to protect its citizens along the fore mentioned trail.
Vilbert, Elizabeth. Traders' Tales: Narratives of Cultural Encounters in the Columbia Plateau, 1807-1846. University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Before Montana was a state, before it was even part of the Dakota and Idaho territories, and before Lewis and Clark traveled through region on their way to the Pacific, Montana was inhabited by seven Indian tribes. On the Great Plains, there were the Blackfoot Indians, the Crow Indians, the Assiniboine Indians, and the Northern Cheyenne Indians. In the Rocky Mountains, the three main tribes were the Salish Indians, Kootenai Indians, and Pend d’Oreilles (pond-oray) Indians which would later makeup of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation, the three tribes are also known as just as the Flathead Indians. Much of the history of Montanan Indian tribes before American expansion into the region is fairly vague because of the lack of a written language. However, we have been able to learn much about them with passing of stories and...
Barnett, James. The Natchez Indians: A History to 1735. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press (2007).
Sioux as told through John G. Neihardt, an Indian boy then a warrior, and Holy Man
Fox, R. (2008). Battle of the Little Big Horn. Retrieved April 30, 2014, from International Encyclopedia