Worley’s latest intrusion quite possibly its best

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of articles about small towns in Kootenai County.

Small-town Worley, Idaho, has recently blossomed into a modern, resortlike place, but you’d not know it by visiting within its city limits.

Worley, instead, lends its address to a new hotel and golf course and a busy casino – all, however, discreetly located several miles up the road from rundown remains of a town having seen better times. When times were better, though, it’s hard to say.

Worley has always been a rustic place, known historically for its agriculture and timber, mostly. But those were always commodities that passed through town more than they were a part of the industry of the town itself. The town itself was more a place of general stores, churches and schools and, eventually, its railroad tracks and its major highway.

For several years, it also had a brush with the Space Age, but not in a particularly positive way. In the early 1960s, Worley was one of nine highly expendable small towns in the upper Inland Northwest – a Cold War target in the game of nuclear brinksmanship.

Basically, the history of the Worley area has been one of the outside world repeatedly moving in, somewhat invading.

Initially the area had been inhabited by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe as a part of its homeland, and then as a part of its reservation. Outsiders thought the reservation too large, so beginning in 1887, each Indian resident, adult and child, was allotted a certain number of acres, and what was left was made available to homesteaders in 1909.

Those first settlers were in a hurry and started moving into the area in 1906, and Worley was platted in 1908 – in anticipation. This was the first invasion.

After 1909, as timber was cut and land was cleared, farms and ranches developed in the area, and Worley became the region’s center. It was a disconnected center, however, without roads to the outside. Early-on there weren’t even wagon trails. A railroad came through in 1913, but no major road until the precursor to highway U.S. 95 was completed in 1926.

These were the second and third invasions.

A railroad allowed for the shipment of grain and timber, and associated businesses grew rapidly. It also allowed for passage of people through, on their way to Harrison or points east, but there was little reason for people to stop in Worley. There was no lake, no river, no thing of particular interest to the outside world in early Worley.

The town’s namesake, Charles Worley, was the area’s first Indian Agent and had made the original town site his headquarters. The town was incorporated as a village in 1917 by Kootenai County – not under Coeur d’Alene Tribal government – but was not allowed an elected mayor until becoming an official city in 1956.

At the 2000 census, Worley had 54 families, 81 households and 223 residents, and in 2006, an estimated population of 220 – a trend typical of Worley’s 100-year history.

Unlike any other town in Kootenai County with more than 100 people, Worley was less than 95 percent Caucasian – 69 percent – and was more than 2 percent Native American – 29 percent – in 2000. Despite being within the limits of the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation, Worley itself is not owned by the tribe and Native Americans are accordingly a minority population.

This general minority status for Indians in the Kootenai County portion of the reservation has resulted, in large part, from the original homesteading of the reservation and subsequent agricultural lease and then sale of reservation parcels to non-Indians as early Indian attempts at agriculture floundered.

Worley’s two modern claims to fame came some 30 years apart, but both have been outside the actual town, Worley merely lending its name to the address of each. Both were also invasions of sorts – one by the military and one by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.

Invasion number four began at a particularly tense time during the Cold War. Spokane’s Fairchild Air Force Base was home to the 567th Strategic Missile Squadron and its Atlas-E intercontinental ballistic missiles. Eight small towns in Washington – ranging from Wilbur to the west, Deer Park to the north, and Sprague to the south – and Worley, the eastern-most, were selected as sites for missile launch complexes.

The Worley site, known as Launch Complex 567-3, received its Atlas-E ICBM with great ceremony 47 years ago, on April 17, 1961. A large crowd of spectators turned out, including Coeur d’Alene Tribal Chief Joseph Gray and Squadron Commander Maj. Fred Grinham, to watch the missile, sans its nuclear warhead, trucked into the site.

Usually stored deep within its concrete and steel silo, the missile was periodically glimpsed in its raised, launch position undergoing fueling practice. Almost four years later, in March of 1965, the missile was removed. Subsequently, huge underground rocket propellant holding tanks and the electronics were also removed and the silo was sold to a private party.

A brief pictorial history of site 567-3 can be viewed at www.siloworld.com/CONST /Atlas/ATE/567th/Museum/ museum.htm.

Worley’s current claim to fame, the fifth invasion, is the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel and the Circling Raven Golf Course, both owned and operated by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.

According to promotional information, the resort currently employs 800 people and brings in more than $20 million a year in profits. The hotel has more than 200 “luxury rooms” and the casino has more than 100,000 square feet of gaming space and 1,800 gaming machines. Begun in 1993, it is a “still-growing destination resort.” In addition, the Circling Raven offers “world-class golf.”

Five invasions in 100 years. That’s been a lot of intrusion of the outside world into once isolated native-held land. In the past, few of the changes have been for the better or have lasted.

Now, though, rather than being known for its old buildings – most dating back 50 to 90 years – its poverty – in 2000, 20 percent of Worley’s population lived below the poverty line and its median family income tied for lowest with three other county small towns – or its elderly – third-oldest in the county with 20 percent of its residents of retirement age – Worley is becoming internationally famous for its casino and golf.

With time, this last invasion could be Worley’s best.