page_title: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho / History
caption_attribution_description: English: PH Coll 1043.46a Subjects (LCSH): Powder magazines--Idaho--Coeur d'Alene
context_page_description: Coeur d'Alene is the largest city and county seat of Kootenai County, Idaho, United States. It is the principal city of the Coeur d'Alene Metropolitan Statistical Area. In 2019, the United States Census Bureau estimated the city's population at 52,414. The city is a satellite city of Spokane, which is located about thirty miles to the west, in the state of Washington. The two cities are the key components of the Spokane–Coeur d'Alene combined statistical area, of which Coeur d'Alene is the third-largest city. Coeur d'Alene is the largest city in North Idaho. The city is situated on the north shore of the 25-mile long Lake Coeur d'Alene. Locally, Coeur d'Alene is known as the "Lake City," or simply called by its initials: "CDA."
  The city is named after the Coeur d'Alene People, a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans who lived along the rivers and lakes of the region, in a territory of 5,500 square miles extending into Washington and Montana. The origins of the city began with being a fort town; General William Tecumseh Sherman sited what became known as Fort Sherman on the north shore of Lake Coeur d'Alene in 1878.
context_section_description: The Coeur d'Alene people called themselves by the autonym Schitsu'umsh in Coeur d'Alene, one of the Salishan languages, meaning  "those who are found here" or "the found ones". 
  The area was extensively explored by David Thompson of the North West Company starting in 1809 when he established the Kullyspell House on Lake Pend Orielle. Thompson, who usually used native names to describe the places and people he came across for unexplained reasons ascribed the name of “Pointed Hearts” to one the tribes he traded with and “Pointed Heart Lake” for the lake they lived near. As French was the spoken language of the Canadian fur traders, it is likely that “pointed heart” has its origins in the French transliteration of Cœur or “heart”, d’ or “in the middle of” and Alêne or “awl” meaning the tribal traders had hearts as sharp as the tip of an awl or sharp hearted and were shrewd, tough businessmen.
  The Oregon boundary dispute (or Oregon question) arose as a result of competing British and American claims to the Pacific Northwest of North America in the first half of the 19th century. The British had trading ties extending from Canada and had started settlements in present-day British Columbia and at Fort Astoria on the Pacific coast near the mouth of the Columbia River. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 ended the disputed joint occupation of the area in present-day Idaho when Britain ceded all rights to land south of the 49th parallel to the United States.
  With the discovery of gold out west and the establishment of Idaho Territory in 1863, there was an increase in settlers to the region. When General William Tecumseh Sherman was commander of the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars and following the defeat of General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn, he erected several forts in the west. During a tour of the Inland Northwest on his way to Fort Walla Walla on the Mullan Road, he was impressed by the scenery of the area and ordered a fort constructed on the lake in 1877 and gave it the name Fort Coeur d'Alene but it was later changed to Fort Sherman to honor the general. The fort, which was established in 1878 is now the site of North Idaho College, which now occupies the former fort site which gave the city its name.
  Miners and prospectors came to the region after gold and silver deposits were found in the Coeur d'Alene mountains and the Northern Pacific Railroad came to town in 1883. The town became the location where ore from the mining district was transferred to the rail lines from steamboats that traveled down from the Coeur d'Alene River from the Cataldo Mission. The township was officially incorporated by petition on August 22, 1887. In the 1890s, two significant miners' uprisings took place in the Coeur d'Alene Mining District, where the workers struggled with high risk and low pay. In 1892, the union's discovery of a labor spy in their midst, in the person of Charlie Siringo, sometime cowboy and Pinkerton agent, resulted in a strike that developed into a shooting war between miners and the company. Years later Harry Orchard, who owned a share of the Hercules Mine in the nearby mountains before it began producing, confessed to a secret, brutal and little understood role in the Colorado Labor Wars. He later confessed to dynamiting a $250,000 mill belonging to the Bunker Hill Mining Company near Wardner during another miners' uprising in 1899. He later returned to Idaho to assassinate former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg in 1905.
  After a U.S. Geological Survey done in the 1890s, it became widely known that there were large quantities of white pine, a highly prized softwood, in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains. The lumber industry from the eastern US began to inventory the timberlands, acquire land, and invest in facilities across much of northern Idaho. This was welcome relief to the town of Coeur d’Alene, which had been losing population and reeling from the Panic of 1893, a flood, and the closure of Fort Sherman. Coeur d’Alene incorporated as a city on September 4, 1906, and by 1908 it had become the county seat
caption: Cougar Gulch, 1913
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