PNWMountains

Did you know that Sandpoint once had a floating ballroom? In 1908 the Northern Navigation Company built the steamer Northern right here in town, at the present-day site of Sandpoint City Beach. At 102 feet long, with two decks and a screw propeller instead of a paddle wheel, she was built for work on Lake Pend Oreille, but she was dressed for a good time, with a ballroom for dancing and live entertainment, an electric-powered orthophonic phonograph, and seating on the stern made for picnic lunches.

When you stand on Schweitzer and look down at Lake Pend Oreille shining below, you are looking across a homeland far older than the resort, the town of Sandpoint, or Idaho itself. For thousands of years this lake, its rivers, and its mountain shores belonged to the Kalispel people, an Interior Salish people whose own name, Ql'ispé, means lake or river paddlers, as the Bonner County Historical Society explains. Fur traders called them Pend d'Oreille, French for hanging from the ear, after their circular shell earrings.

Every mountain town needs one grocery store that feels like it truly belongs to the place, and in Sandpoint that store is Winter Ridge Natural Foods. Sitting on Lake Street just blocks from Lake Pend Oreille, this natural foods market has been stocking local pantries and vacation kitchens since 1997, and it is the first stop many Schweitzer visitors make on their way up the mountain.

On a fall afternoon in downtown Sandpoint, after the drive down from Schweitzer, there is a brick-walled room where the day slows down over a glass of wine. That room is the tasting room of Pend d'Oreille Winery on Cedar Street, and the winery sums up its invitation plainly: wine, friends and food. Part of Sandpoint since 1995, it gives visitors staying on the mountain an easy evening in town, and locals a familiar place to gather, taste something made close to home, and linger a little longer.

Some of Sandpoint's best ideas start on a chairlift, and Evans Brothers Coffee is one of them. Brothers Rick and Randy Evans, both passionate skiers, developed their vision for a coffee company over long chairlift rides at Schweitzer Mountain Resort during the winter of 2008/2009. In the summer of 2009 they made it real, founding Evans Brothers Coffee in Sandpoint with a simple ambition: build something unique and enduring around a great cup of coffee.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

If you follow the South Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River into a narrow valley in the Idaho panhandle, you come to Wallace, a town so compact that its homes climb the hillsides on wooden stairs. Did you know the entire town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places? Its story begins in the spring of 1884, when Colonel William R. Wallace, a Civil War veteran, built a cabin at a place he called Placer Center.

Winter is getting closer at Schweitzer, even if the lifts are not spinning yet. The resort is in its quiet off-season, with tentative opening day Friday, November 27, conditions permitting, so enjoy the panhandle's fall calendar while the countdown builds.

Did you know there is a town in the Silver Valley so narrow that it never really had a street at all? Seven miles northeast of Wallace, the old mining town of Burke squeezed itself into Burke Canyon, a gorge only about 300 feet wide. There was room for Canyon Creek, a road, and a railroad, but not in the usual side-by-side way. In Burke, everything had to share the same narrow line, and the town that grew up there became one of the most ingenious, and improbable, places in Idaho mining history.

Sunday, October 18, 2026