Tesemini club has 100-year history

Virginia Harger paid $1,200 for the Spirit Lake cabin where she spends her summer months.

Granted, her family bought the 100-foot lot in 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression.

Harger, 95, is a member of The Tesemini Outing Club, formed in 1908 by Walter Burns. Burns and his wife had camped in the area in the early 1900s.

“I don’t know how they ever found it in the first place,” Harger said. “But they thought it would be a great place for others to come spend summers.”

Burns gathered 30 of his Spokane friends from First Presbyterian Church. They each put in $500 and bought the 80-acre property on Spirit Lake for $15,000.

Today, there are 33 families with cabins in their little nook in the woods, Harger said. Two-thirds of the cabins are passed down to families. Club members pay annual dues for a year-round caretaker and for any repairs on the property. Anyone who buys property there must sign an agreement to become a member of the club.

“We aren’t much of a social club,” Harger said. “We’re kind of like a housing development.” It’s a collection of people who love the outdoors, walking on the trails, watching moose in the woods, picking huckleberries or swimming in the beautiful water.”

“Spirit Lake is a very unusual lake,” she said. “It doesn’t have a gravelly bottom, it has clay. It’s more like a bathtub.”

This Saturday, 200 people including current and former members will flock to the club’s lakeside oasis to celebrate the 100th anniversary with a dinner catered by Longhorn Barbecue and festivities. Club members and their families will be introduced according to the decades that they joined.

Some of the families have been on the land for five generations.

“Everyone seems to love it so much we don’t want to sell outside the family,” Harger said.

Before the land was bought by Burns and his friends, it was the site of the Marshall Point Resort, a very fashionable lair for upper society, Harger said.

“They would take a train to Rathdrum, then a horse and buggy up to the lake and then a steamboat would bring them up to the club,” she said.

In 1939, when residents had to cross a wooden bridge to get over to the club, a huge forest fire broke out.

“We were all afraid the bridge would catch fire and we’d be stranded. We were wondering how we would paddle our docks across the lake to get away,” she said, laughing.

Pam Wilson’s club involvement is through marriage. Her husband’s family has had a cabin since 1937. Wilson has been coming with his family since they were married 39 years ago.

The beauty of the area and its seclusion are the club’s bragging rights, Wilson said.

“It’s a beautiful little spot in the world that we’ve enjoyed these many years,” Harger said.