Lewiston, 1875

Notes on roads in and out of Lewiston

Lewiston is not at the present time a very thriving place.  Business is very dull.  During the great excitement existing in the years after the first discovery of gold in the mountains to the east, and from the washing of the sands along the river banks, the place grew to be of very considerable importance.  Since, however, the mining operations have not proved to be remunerative, it has become simply a shipping point for the country surrounding it.  The town was established in 1861 and 1862; the first trip to reach the place was made in July, 1860, by the steamboat Tenino, Captain White.  Considerable up-river freight is delivered during the few months of the navigable season, but there appears to be but a limited amount of tonnage shipped from there.  Two main roads depart for the interior; one toward the east, to Campbell's Prarie, from sixty to seventy miles, and thence by pack-mules to the gold-mining regions, Elk City, Oro Fino, and Mount Idaho, lying in the west basin of the Bitter Root Mountain range; the other in a northerly direction, to the Spokane and Cour d' Alene regions, a distance of eighty miles.  Two roads leave for Walla-Walla, a distance of eighty miles, both passing through Dayton and Wakesburg; one crosses the Clearwater just above its mouth, and then passes over the Snake at Selkirk's Ferry; the other uses the ferry over the Snake, immediately at the town.  During extremely high water, once in eight or nine years, the plateau upon which the site of the town is located is slightly submerged, but at a low stage the river becomes very narrow, and a large sand-bar extends out, and almost entirely across it.

There is a good road for fifteen miles to the military post of Fort Lapwai, situated on Lapwai Creek, three miles from its junction with the Clearwater; the latter, which is but a mountain stream, is only navigable for steamboats as high up as that point, and then only during a very favorable contition of the water, when raised by the melting of the snow in the spring of the year.

N. Michler, Corps of Engineers, Messages and Documents of the War Department, 1875-1876, Volume two, Page 778-779