Potlatch and Environs

By November 1905 Potlatch employed nearly 850 men. By the time the mill opened, the company was receiving hundreds of job inquiries monthly. After 15 years in the Palouse, the Potlatch Lumber Company operated 15 logging camps and paid nearly a million and a half dollars in wages annually. It accounted for one-sixth of all the wages paid by all of Idaho's industries.

The most significant alterations brought by Potlatch were the virtual elimination of small-scale lumbering in the area. As early as 1903 the company established retail outlets at Pullman and Uniontown. By 1905 it ran a dozen retail yards in the region. By 1908 there were 33 yards, one in virtually every small town in the area.

By 1910 Potlatch began aggressively marketing its cutover lands. Land-hungry settlers eagerly bought, and Potlatch opened a whole new territory as it pushed back the Latah County forests, significantly increasing the region's population. In just a few years the presence of Potlatch had dramatically altered the lifestyles of Palouse area farmers, creating markets for their produce, seasonal jobs, inexpensive places to settle, and cheap lumber for construction.

Palouse, Washington was a boom town in the early days of the Potlatch construction, but the boom that began in 1903, peaked in 1910. The bust was a long time coming, but when it finally arrived it did so dramatically. It started with the construction of the mill and town at Potlatch. The new community gradually absorbed Palouse businesses. The opening of the Elk River sawmill in 1911 started the downhill decline of Palouse. Also Potlatch did not open its Palouse mill that season, the first time in over three decades that they did not do so. By 1916 Palouse boosters realized that the boom had ended; the town gradually shrank. Handsome, large, but often empty brick buildings stood as testament to the Palouse that once was. By 1917 Potlatch had unloaded all of its Palouse property except railroad land.

Three WI&M communities - Harvard, Deary, and Bovill - became permanent Latah County towns. Mines, logging camps, and farms stimulated the growth of Harvard. Deary had been a small settlement as early as the 1880s, but when Potlatch officials purchased homestead land around the depot the town of Deary flourished. About 10 miles beyond Deary the WI&M terminated near a resort for outdoorsmen operated by Hugh and Charlotte Bovill. Bovill quickly became Latah County's third largest town. Finally, there was Elk River, about twenty miles beyond Bovill in Clearwater County. In 1910 Potlatch officials resolved to construct a new plant in the heart of their richest timberlands. Around the mill the company constructed a town for over a thousand people, complete with stores and school. The Elk River plant ran smoothly during its first few months, then in October the snows came and the mill closed for seven months. Potlatch officials hoped that the first winter's experience was atypical, but it was not and the mill closed for good in 1931.