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Hawaii’s World
NATIONAL Geographic magazine once called Lake Coeur d'Alene in the Idaho panhandle one of the five most beautiful lakes in the world. Lake Coeur d’Alene
is beautifulThe line of lakes of which it is a part reminds me of the lake country of Scotland minus any alleged monster such as the one that draws tourists to Loch Ness and inspires periodic "I saw it" stories.
Coeur d'Alene lake itself also reminds me of Lake Taupo at Queenstown on New Zealand's South Island.
My message here is one I'm rediscovering happily in recent years: There is much wonderment to be had just in seeing America.
New York City. The Rockies. The red rock country of Arizona. The Appalachians. the Sierra Nevadas. The Mississippi. New Orleans. Philadelphia. Boston and New England. Chicago. The prairies. The new and old great cities of the South. Civil War battlefields. Great Lakes resorts. And right next door are Canada to the north with a French twist and Mexico to the south with a Spanish culture.
Twenty-five-mile-long, mountain-surrounded Lake Coeur d'Alene deservedly has one of America's great resort hotels on its shore, the Coeur d'Alene Resort, some 17 floors high in an otherwise low-rise, wonderfully clean and tidy city of about 25,000. The resort operates the world's only floating golf green, an acre of land reached by boat after the initial tee-off drive. A water landing brings a one-stroke penalty.
There are lake cruises, float plane tours and hundreds of private boats on the water in the summer, skiing half an hour or so away in three directions in the winter. The old mining and lumbering activities that used to support the city have dwindled. Tourism is taking their place. So is retirement living.
On an attractive wooden stilt building over a corner of the resort's boat harbor is the headquarters of the Hagadone Co., whose far-flung printing operations extend to a branch in Honolulu.
An Indian reservation lies to the South. Spokane, 35 minutes away from Coeur d'Alene by car, is the closest connection to major airlines. Its terminal is pleasantly small, convenient and usually uncrowded.
HIGHWAYS lead north into Canada, south to the state capital at Boise with a lot of the travel through unspoiled wilderness. Idaho abounds with recreational hiking, hunting and fishing opportunities.
In World War II, the now-defunct Farragut Naval Training Station at Lake Pend Oreille, 25 miles north of Coeur d'Alene, ballooned to be Idaho's second largest city, after Boise, with a population of more than 25,000. All that remains is a small naval acoustic research center in Farragut State Park. Nearby Sandpoint has a population of only 5,200.
Idaho's current population is nearly 1.2 million, about the same as Hawaii, but it has more than 12 times our area. Tourism may well provide its major future economic growth. In gross numbers, it still lags Hawaii but it is one beautiful place to see and visit.
How it got its shape -- compared to a question mark lying on its back -- is something I haven't been able to find in any handy references I checked, but obviously was hammered out in deals with Canada and the six U.S. states that it touches. These borders became frozen in stone in 1890 when Idaho was admitted as the 43rd state of the Union.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.