The Trail That Almost Wasn't: How the River Got Its Centennial Path

For most of Post Falls history, the Spokane River was something you worked on. You dammed it for a mill, bridged it for a railroad, or crossed it on your way somewhere else. The North Idaho Centennial Trail changed that relationship. It gave the river a front porch: a paved path that follows the water through town and invites people to slow down, look across at the far bank, and travel the corridor the river has followed for centuries.

The idea began as a vision in 1987, three years before Idaho celebrated the centennial of its statehood. Supporters imagined a commemorative trail along the Spokane River and Lake Coeur d'Alene, and in 1989 they formed the North Idaho Centennial Trail Foundation to oversee its maintenance, stewardship and continued improvement. It took nearly three years of planning before the first section was built.

That first section belonged to Post Falls. Constructed in 1990, it ran from the historic State Line railroad bridge east to Spokane Street in downtown Post Falls. On October 10, 1990, a large crowd gathered at Surveyor's Rock to mark its completion, and two bicycle officers from the Post Falls Police Department rode through ribbons stretched across the 11-foot-wide asphalt pathway. Bob Nelson, chairman of the Kootenai County Centennial Commission, told the crowd, "It's been a long, hard three years with a lot of stumbling blocks."

More stumbling blocks were waiting. The proposed section from Post Falls to Coeur d'Alene drew such fierce opposition that one county commissioner urged that it be abandoned altogether, suggesting the Spokane River itself be designated as a symbolic link between the two cities. Supporters bought property, raised funds, charted routes and secured easements instead. The trail was ultimately rerouted along Interstate 90, and the final link between Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls was completed in 1996. Trail boosters later summed up the struggle in a book title: "The Trail That Almost Wasn't."

Today the trail runs about 23 miles from the Idaho-Washington state line east along the Spokane River to Higgens Point on Lake Coeur d'Alene, and roughly 10 of those miles cross Post Falls, carrying three historical signs along the way. It has been designated Idaho's Millennium Legacy Trail, and together with its Spokane County counterpart it forms a 62-mile corridor. Officials estimated in 2019 that more than 300,000 people a year walk, run or ride it.

For Black Bay Village, the trail is part of everyday river life. The same water that once powered mills and carried logs now carries neighbors on morning walks and evening rides, under a bridge that spells out the trail's name in big white letters. The river did not change. Our way of keeping company with it did, and that may be the centennial gift that lasted.