Dalton retains rural flair

In the past, two things have distinguished the city of Dalton Gardens from its neighbor communities: independence and irrigation. The former resulted in the incorporation of Dalton Village in 1960 and the latter set this easternmost edge of the Rathdrum Prairie apart from most of the rest of Kootenai County’s early agricultural development.

As with most other parts of the county, a railroad was also instrumental in the growth of the community. The railroad is long gone, but a spirit of independence and a unique community irrigation system live on 100 years after the two got their start.

Today, Dalton Gardens is a suburban spread of roughly 1,550 acres, 2,400 people – 2,278 at the time of the 2000 census – more than 800 households and about 700 families. It has no businesses or industries of note and no downtown. Agriculture now consists of backyard gardens and pet horses.

Years ago, Dalton went the way of the Rathdrum Prairie today – from a primarily agricultural area to a bedroom community – but it did so in a way that has attempted to retain certain positive aspects of a farming way of life, without having to actually live the hard work and uncertain prospects of a farming way of life.

While the Rathdrum Prairie is swallowed into crowded, monotonous housing developments told apart only by their welcoming signs or the differences in their surrounding fences and block walls, annexed bit by bit into sprawling Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene, Dalton chose 48 years ago to shape its own destiny.

To avoid annexation by Coeur d’Alene, at a time when its population was half what it is today, Dalton sought out and achieved self-determination and retained a semblance of its unique past by incorporating into the simplest townlike unit of its time, a village – Dalton Village. Subsequent state law made all incorporated areas cities, so it became the city of Dalton Gardens.

Nobody seems to know where “Dalton” came from. It might have been the name of an early settler to the area, but if so, he, she, it, or they were prehistoric. “Garden” came from what the Dalton area had once been – the vegetable garden for Coeur d’Alene.

Initially, Dalton was a cattle ranch at the base of Canfield Mountain. The cattle were contracted to be fed to the soldiers at Fort Coeur d’Alene, which became Fort Sherman, which was named for the general who named Canfield Mountain for the rancher, Oscar Canfield, who started the ranch in 1878. As a child, Canfield had been held prisoner by Indians as a survivor of the Whitman Mission massacre of 1847.

Canfield sold his ranch in 1891 and in the early 1900s about 1,000 acres of the prairie was platted and irrigation was instituted. Trains of the Spokane and Inland Empire Railway Co. started passing through the area, traveling between Coeur d’Alene and Hayden Lake (the lake), in 1907.

A train depot was built at what is now Fourth Street and Hanley Avenue. Initially the train carried people from Spokane on recreational outings to the lake near Hayden. As Dalton developed, the train also carried freight, especially fruit, from Dalton’s extensive orchards. With time, roads improved and it became easier to get around in the county by automobile and truck. As a result, the railroad ceased passenger transport in 1929 and freight transport in 1937.

Unique on the prairie, vegetable farming, berry fields and orchards dominated the Dalton area with the introduction of irrigation in 1907. Dalton formed its own irrigation district in 1916, getting both its irrigation water and its domestic-use water from Hayden Lake.

A strong sense of community has existed in Dalton since its initial development. First a community root cellar, followed by a community ice house, then a fruit growers association, was developed in 1909. In 1920, Dalton growers started a farmers’ market in Coeur d’Alene, selling fresh vegetables, fruits and flowers. This was followed by an apple packing plant built by the Dalton Fruit Growers Association in the early 1920s. From there, apples were exported to the East Coast and to foreign markets.

However, in 1935, a fall killing freeze destroyed 90 percent of the apple orchards. Most were not replanted. The packing plant shut down, was converted to other uses and eventually burned down. Railroad tracks were removed. The area began its conversion from real farm country to a rural, farmlike suburb.

As Coeur d’Alene crept northward in the late 1950s, Dalton acres were set aside, bounded by Prairie Avenue to the north, Government Way to the west, Dalton Avenue to the south and Canfield Mountain to the east. These days if you didn’t know those boundaries, you would not be able to distinguish Dalton Gardens from Coeur d’Alene to the west and south or Hayden to the north.

Once inside the boundaries, however, differences become clear. Lots are one acre or larger. Surrounded by city on all sides, Dalton Gardens retains a distinctly rural flair. There are still open fields. There is still livestock. Every place looks different. And every lot is still provided a separate water system for irrigation.

In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation interceded to resurrect the unique but failing irrigation system twice – in 1954 and again in 1962. Since that time, little real farming has taken place in Dalton Gardens, other than that needed for local use such as pasture and hay.

Instead, houses have sprouted as Dalton’s newest money-making crop. New-home building peaked in 2003 and 2004, but new home costs have skyrocketed since then – from around $200,000 per new home to almost $400,000 per new home in 2006.

At the time of the 2000 census, Dalton Gardens had the second-highest concentration of married couples in the county, it had the fourth-highest median age of the county (43 years) and it had the lowest level of family poverty in the county – half the average level. But Dalton Gardens has become fifth-largest of Kootenai County’s 14 towns.

Still, Dalton Gardens has maintained a population density about one-third that of Coeur d’Alene, with new home values roughly twice those of Coeur d’Alene. So, incorporation has served its purpose in keeping Dalton Gardens separate from the city that was threatening encroachment 50 years ago. The Rathdrum Prairie, a few years back, should have taken a lesson from Dalton Gardens.