Evans Lake (1)

On August 15th a friend and I hiked to Evans Lake in the Evans Lake Roadless Area, and a half mile or so above the trail head came across this old Cedar stump which still stands as a lonely and rather obscure piece of the history of the area. Its girth is around four feet and the springboard notches in it can still easily be seen. (Loggers in those days cut springboard notches into which they could insert springboards which then could be used as platforms, allowing the loggers to stand and use their cross-cut saws to cut higher-up the base of the tree where the trunk is narrower.)

In the later part of the 1800’s gold strikes in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains of eastern Idaho were attracting miners from all over the west. In 1883-1884 a road was built up Prospect Creek from the present day town of Thompson Falls Montana which sits beside the Clark Fork of the Columbia River to the foot of the Montana-Idaho divide as access to those Idaho mines. Along that road at Evans Creek, a way-station called Mountain House was built to accommodate those who travelled that road, but it burned in the late 1880s and was not rebuilt. My guess is that this tree was cut and used in the building of that house.