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THOMPSON FALLS

From Architectural and Historical Surveys

When the original town site plat was adopted in 1893, the street bordering the town’s “red light district” received the appropriate name of Maiden Lane.

Thompson Falls and neighboring settlements formed because of very specific geographic and economic reasons: The proximity of their locations to the mining fields and the fact that the railroad and subsequent roads gave access to these points rather than into the goldfields themselves. Their reason for being was to outfit miners into the goldfields and their continued prosperity hinged on the productivity of the Idaho fields. When reports began to filter back over the mountains that the strike may not be as profitable as most believed, fewer new arrivals came into the settlements and people began to leave.

The return rush back through Thompson Falls began that summer of 1884 and lasted into the fall. As good claims became scarce in the Idaho fields, many gave up and returned over the mountains. In perhaps an apocryphal tale told in 1906, several hundred men worked for a company digging a large ditch on Pritchard Creek that summer. After working several months on the project, the company folded, and the angry men returned to Thompson Falls. There they commandeered some Northern Pacific Railroad cars and demanded transportation out of the settlement. The railroad reportedly acceded to their wishes.

In August of 1884, a Weekly Missoulian reporter described the conditions in the settlement:

The town of Thompson Falls is now only a shadow of its former glory, a large number of buildings being deserted, with the names of the builders still remaining on the signs over the doors. A number of the names the writer recognized as old Missoula people, nearly all of whom, we dare say, look upon their venture at Thompson as a “bad break.”

However the reporter did admit, “there is a goodly business transacted at the falls and a fair share of the Coeur d’Alene supplies are shipped at that point.

The same forces that gave Thompson Falls its life no longer could sustain it. That fall, the town contained roughly 400 inhabitants. Yet there could be no doubt that the settlement was slowly dying and withering away. When the hoped for railroad route into the Coeur d’Alene became a reality, it did not originate from Thompson Falls. The town stumbled into a general decline in its economy and population that did not stabilize until the early 1890s.

Life went on. A traveler through the settlement in 1886 estimated the population at 300 souls. He noted two hotels (J.A. Allen’s Hotel, Thompson, and M.J. McCutchen’s Coeur d’Alene Hotel), a livery stable (probably William Saville’s or Zachariah Sale’s), and a mercantile house (most likely Goodchild & Company).

Other merchants in the settlement at the time included Barnes & Keating saloon; Cooper & Decker, general merchandise; Coleman & Son, hardware; Henry Florin, saloon, S.B. Howes, stable; Jacob Herman, blacksmith; M.D. Hoeye, barber; Moor & Keating, merchandise; Pontel & Matthews, saloon.

A school began operating in late 1885 and by the next year subscription funds had been raised to extend the term from four months to six months. Plans called for a bridge to be built over the falls for more immediate access to the area across the river. The Thompson Falls Toll Road and Ferry Company became the latest successor to McClinchy & Company in providing transport over the river.

Most businesses and residences remained south of the railroad tracks along Lower Railroad Avenue, although small ranches and livery stables occupied the lower reaches of Capitol Hill. Property owners in Thompson Falls included two Chinese: Charlie Wong and Lee Sung. Much of the railroad track construction up the Clark’s Fork Valley had been laid by Chinese laborers. During the boom times of 1884-84 some of these Chinese stayed on in the various settlements. In Thompson Falls they lived along the river and controlled the “washy” business. Frequently the victims of crime, racial hatred and discrimination they never found a welcome in any frontier settlement, and this included Thompson Falls. The last may have left the settlement before 1888. No mention is made of a Chinese name in the records after that.

Writing in 1890, M.J. McCutchen wrote that the town owed its continued existence to the fact of its “commanding natural position” on the Northern Pacific Railroad and the Clark’s Fork River. And despite the fact that the railroad “has always discriminated against the place” in the matter of freight and fare charges, the community continues to prosper. “We have no boom and we don’t want one,” McCutchen quixotically explained. Speaking in almost idyllic terms, he states that Thompson Falls: “Has no politicians, lawyers, preachers, or other undesirable elements of population. It always keeps a schoolteacher. The school serves for church occasionally. There is an Odd Fellows lodge and a dance hall under it, for the young folks.”