A Loving Father Has Made His Point

Edson Pugh raised his three children well, worked hard and died far too young. But he won’t be forgotten not as long as the U.S. Geological Survey issues maps of Lake Coeur d’Alene.

Pugh Point is the newest addition to the lake, approved by the Idaho Geographic Names Advisory Council and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.

The point juts out between Half Round and Powderhorn bays on the lake’s eastern side. Its pebbly shore rises gently out of the lake, then flattens into a shady clearing that ends at a steep forested hillside.

“It was my father who made the purchase of land and dreamed it could be an income for his grandchildren for college,” says John Pugh, Edson’s son and the man behind the point’s new name. “Hopefully the name will never be changed.”

Photographs on the walls of John’s summer cabin show a long family history in the Harrison area. His grandfather moved from Spokane to Harrison in 1902 and became a partner in the Russell and Pugh Lumber Co.

The mill was the town. It provided most jobs and helped other Harrison businesses thrive. Young Edson, born in 1904, grew up among chutes and log booms. Like his father, he pursued the business rather than the labor end of the company.

A fire in 1919 destroyed the mill, but Russell and Pugh bought another not far from town. Edson eventually became a junior partner.

“I met Edson in church,” says his 91-year-old widow, Irene Smith, who moved to Harrison to teach school in 1929. “He brought me home as a bride to a float house on the Coeur d’Alene River. It was the cutest little cottage.”

Edson decided to buy the 125 acres on Lake Coeur d’Alene in the 1940s.

As Russell and Pugh’s bookkeeper, he’d kept track of a sawyer who’d charged to his wages a purchase of land and lumber.

While the man worked for the company, Edson wasn’t worried; the sawyer’s wages paid the debt. But Edson heard he planned to leave the state while he still owed $1,500.

“Edson came home from work and said, ‘Come with me and let me show you some property for sale,”’ says Irene, who lives in Oregon now. “I remember crawling through the brush and cottonwood trees along the shore.

“The man wanted $3,000. It seemed like an awful lot. I was against buying it.”

But Edson saw opportunity. He tried to resell the land, but no one wanted it. So he kept it, figuring its timber would put his grandchildren through college.

He was right, but he never knew it. Edson was only 44 when he died of a heart attack.

In the 1960s, Irene and John, who was teaching school, opened a small summer resort, Ponderosa Campland, on the land. They built three cottages and a cabin with showers and bathrooms.

The resort drew a healthy supply of tourists, but it wasn’t profitable. After five years, Irene subdivided and sold a few lots. She held on to the point.

The cabin sold and was remodeled into a cozy lake home. Irene bought it back a few years later. Now, the lakeshore cabin, complete with dock, is home to her children most summers.

John, 64, and his brother and sister own the land and are selling most of it.

“What do we use it for? Just campouts,” he says.

But before new owners claim the point, which never was formally named, the Pugh children decided to name it for the man who brought it into the family.

The naming process took 17 uneventful months. John collected letters of support from neighbors, Edson’s friends and former employees, museum directors and others.

No one protested. Last October, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names mailed him the good news. The entry for Pugh Point in the nation’s repository of geographic names lists Edson Pugh as the namesake.

“I think it’s wonderful to name the point after him,” Irene says. “That’s what we’ve called it all these years anyway.”

To celebrate, John will dedicate Pugh Point at 2 p.m., Aug. 15. He’s invited Kootenai County commissioners, his mother and her husband Ernie Smith, who’s an old friend of Edson’s, to speak.

He’ll also erect a sign on the point and lead a boat parade, open to anyone and anything that floats, from Half Round Bay around Pugh Point at 3 p.m.

Map of area.