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EARLY SETTLERS IN THE LOWER CLARK FORK RIVER VALLEY

BY EVELYN M. DAVIS

The 1860s marked the very earliest of settlements in this area by white persons who came intending to stay. It was a slow and dangerous development but each succeeding year made things a little easier for those who followed.

The very first of these early settlers in the Clarks Fork valley came alone, not daring to bring families into such a primitive and unexplored region. One of the earliest pioneers in this valley was a man named Charlie Kimball who moved into the Horse Plains area in the year 1860. He built a log house near the mouth of what was later named Lynch Creek west of Plains, intending to remain there to buy and sell furs from the Indians. However he was there only a year or two when he was killed in an argument over furs by the Indians with whom he was trading.

The next white man to settle in this valley was Joseph K. Clark, who in 1864 moved into Horse Plains to superintend the carrying of the U.S. mail by pony express rider from Fort Missoula to old Fort Walla Walla. The route used by the pony express from Fort Missoula to Horse Plains followed much the present route of Highway 93 to the present town of Ravalli. From there it turned west to what is now Perma, where riders forded the Flathead river to the north side. The route extended on through the Camas Prairie country, past Dog Lake, and finally over a low pass south of the lake into the settlement of Horse Plains. The mail contract was held by Joseph Clark’s brother, W.A. Clark, who later became United States senator from Montana Joe Clark took up the ranch later owned by the Lynch family on the creek known as Lynch Creek. The first post office was established at that spot, in fact the town of Horse Plains as it developed was clustered in that area, four miles up the creek north from its present site.

The first white family, as a unit, to settle in the western Clark’s Fork valley was the family of Mr. John W. Patrick who in 1869 located near Plains to operate a ferry boat across the river for pack trains. Mrs. Patrick, her two sons and three daughters rode horseback from their former home at Walla Walla to their new home at Horse Plains. All their possessions and provisions were brought along with them by pack train, their route being the trail used by pony 4xpress riders which led around Lake Pend Oreille and up the Clarks Fork river, a distance of about 400 miles. This family brought with them precious flower and vegetable seeds, also a few strawberry plants and apple trees. Thus they were the first to cultivate virgin soil in western Clark’s Fork valley.

In 1870 Mr. Neptune Lynch was the next to bring his family into what now promised to become a community. He was the first of the pioneers to make permanent settlement in what is now Plains. Succeeding generations of the Lynch family have continued to live on the home ranch.

Mr. and Mrs. Lynch and their three sons and two daughters traveled to Horse Plains over a trail called Patrick’s Knob trail, which led out through the mountains south of Plains over to the St. Regis valley and to the old Mullan wagon road. Their household goods, stoves and provisions were floated down the Clark’s Fork river from Hellgate, (Missoula) on a raft made of poles tied together.

Because of so much travel each spring over the Clark’s Fork route from Fort Missoula on the east to Fort Walla Walla on the west the Oregon Steam Navigation Co., of Portland, Oregon decided to put a line of steamboats on the Clark’s Fork river. The company commenced operation in the fall of 1865 and in the spring of 1866 the “Mary Moody” crossed the Pend Oreille Lake and went up the Clark’s Fork river about 15 miles to Cabinet Landing where the Cabinet Gorge is now located. Later a second steamboat, the “Cabinet” ran from the upper end of Cabinet Falls to the rapids at Rock Island, near the present town of Noxon. Here cargo was transferred to a third vessel, the “Missoula” which ran from the upper end of Rock Island rapids to Thompson Falls. These boats continued operation throughout the year of 1869.

A vast amount of travel utilized this transportation as the company reported that during its poorest year, 4000 animals and their packs were transported up the river. Although this particular line of steamers was discontinued, boats were in use between Noxon and Thompson Falls until after the coming of the railroad.

One early settler of Thompson Falls recalls that the last steamboat to be used was named the “Katy Hallett.”

During the years of steamboat travel up the Clark’s Fork river a settlement called Shannonville sprang up about 3 miles west of the present town of Thompson Falls on the north bank of the river (near the Rivers Bend golf course). The steamboats necessarily landed and discharged their cargo below the Falls and here a community was started which later grew to be a town of more than a thousand persons. But with the coming of the railroad, Shannonville went into decline and now nearly traces of this early town’s existence have been lost, except for a few foundations and crumbling logs. On the opposite side of the river and a little to the west was the thriving community of Belknap. At one time it boasted a population of between tow and three thousand and streets were named and business houses numbered. However, a devastating fire in the late 1880s destroyed most of Belknap. A combined store, post office and filling station, a rural school and a few homes are all that remain of this once busy community.