Tuesday, August 14, 2007 -- Missoula Flood Trip

Tuesday, August 14, 2007 – We left at 8:30am, picking up the box lunches on the way. We headed northeast from Sandpoint. I saw the red and white radio mast (Benchmark: TO1051) located on the Bonners Ferry Hwy, north of the City of Sandpoint. We stopped to read the "Lake Pend Oreille," "Glacial Ice Dam" and "Glacial Lake Missoula" signboards. We stopped at Hope in Bonner County where we saw the David Thompson and Finnan Macdonald marker (GC5D6) and a benchmark (TO0141) in the base of the historical monument.

We visited the Cabinet Gorge Hydroelectric Development located on the Clark Fork River in Sanders County, Montana and Bonner County, Idaho. Massive dams of ice from the Cordilleran Ice Sheet once stood here (see photo) and blocked water in the Clark Fork River Valley from leaving western Montana creating massive Glacial Lake Missoula until their catastrophic failures. When the ice dams failed, water roared at speeds up to 65 mph across Idaho, Washington and Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in the largest floods known to have occurred on earth.

We traveled into Montana on Hwy 200. We saw a stone monument to David Thompson (1770-1857), geographer and explorer for the Northwest Company, a British fur trading outfit. In 1809, he built his house near the mouth of the present day Thompson River. We stopped at Thompson Falls where we had a picnic lunch. The yellow jackets pestered us eventually stinging a young woman in our group on her arm. I saw the Thompson Falls Hydroelectric Dam (National Register of Historic Places) and the nearby historic St. Luke’s Hospital, a white framed building.

We stopped at the summit of Thompson Pass (4,852 elevation). I saw historical signboards “Historic Link to the Past” and “Rare Residents of the Northern Forests”. I also saw an enormous Smokey Bear sign and an elevation benchmark (Reset 1965).

We stopped at Murphy, Idaho (population 52) to view the Sprag Pole Inn and Museum and have refreshments. We visited the historical G.A.R. Murray cemetery. Many of the group left coins on the wooden grave marker of Maggie Hall (Molly-B-Dam) who died at age 35 years.

We ate a buffet dinner at the infamous Enaville Resort, known by locals as the Snake Pit, where a scene or two in the movie “Dante’s Peak” (1997) starring Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton was filmed.