Lewiston

Idaho is 465 miles from the Pacific Ocean, but it has a seaport at Lewiston, population 30,000, where the Clearwater River joins the Snake River on its way west. Lewis and Clark camped here, which is why the town honors Meriwether Lewis. (Just across the river in Washington, Clarkston honors William Clark.) The town sprang to life when Captain E.D. Pierce discovered gold 75 miles up the Clearwater River in 1860. Miners, as always, needed supplies. The Clearwater was too shallow for steamboats, so the obvious spot for a supply center was Lewiston. Since then, the town has been the scene of one historical extravaganza after another.

The chosen spot happened to be on lands belonging to the Nez Perce Indians. The settlers therefore were obliged (by the government's Indian agent) to build no permanent buildings. So they erected canvas tents. About 2,000 people were housed this way, earning the place the nickname "Ragtown." What later became cliches in Hollywood westerns was the stuff of daily life in Lewiston: vigilante committees, the raw democracy of miner's camp rules, saloon life, prostitution parlors. These were the years of the Civil War, so partisans had another reason to express themselves in extreme and violent ways.

The population grew to 10,000, and Lewiston became the capital of the Idaho Territory in 1863 and its first incorporated city. A new treaty with the Nez Perce legitimized permanent buildings. But by the time the first legislature convened, someone had discovered gold in southern Idaho. Miners fled to the new excitement, and the population collapsed to a few hundred. The bulk of Idaho residents, now in the south, wanted the capital down there, for the central Idaho mountains made the journey between the two places particularly arduous. Lewiston tried to hang on to the capital by refusing to surrender the state seal and treasury. It took the U.S. Army to pry these objects from Lewiston's grasp. Despite continued years of protest and litigation, the capital moved to Boise and stuck.

Lewiston survived all this, and then had to survive serious catastrophic flooding and an earthquake or two. The town built up its population again upon the development of agriculture and the timber industry. Still a gateway to the Pacific, Lewiston became a mill town, a center of operations for the Potlatch Forest Company. The mild climate of the region was conducive to the growing of grapes, cherries, and apples; wheat and lentils.

Sternwheeler and steamboat lore naturally became part of the Lewiston heritage. In the early years, the sternwheeler "Shoshone" tried to test whether Hells Canyon could be navigated, possibly opening river transport south to Boise. The boat survived the trip downriver, battered and bruised after combat with rapids, rocks, and waterfalls, but it was clear that river travel would not be feasible. Had Hells Canyon been less hellish, a water route connecting Idaho's north and south might have prevented the tendency of these two regions to grow apart, their affections sometimes alienated.

Beginning the 1930s the federal government began building hydroelectric and flood control dams on the Columbia, Snake, and Clearwater rivers, bringing a regulated river and slack water to Lewiston. The city voted in 1958 to create a port commission with the authority to tax and build port improvements. Ever since, the city has become ever more deliberate about marketing the region's wheat, timber, and other products to markets all over the world. By 1977, lists of U.S. ports called Lewiston a "major" port. Now barge-and-tug lore are part of Lewiston's story.