Centennial Celebration Bonners Ferry Recognizes A Rich History With A Yearlong Party That Begins This Week

Like a giant quilting bee, the people of Bonners Ferry are stitching together events to celebrate their ties to one another and their hometown’s past.

The first event will be Thursday when Bonners Ferry the town celebrates its 100th anniversary with a procession through town, Native American prayer and music.

The “quilt-work” will continue throughout the centennial year with the Kootenai Tribe’s large-scale pow-wow in June, Kootenai River Days and a formal New Year’s Eve dance.

Organizers are looking for more ideas and events to patch together a year of seamless fun.

“A lot of people who have never met each other are working together and coming together,” said Gary Morgan, chairman of the city’s centennial committee and co-owner of the Boundary Trading Co.

A major player in the festivities will be the Kootenai Tribe, whose members’ ancestors were the Kootenai Valley’s first residents.

“The Indians were living where the town is,” said Basil White, the tribe’s historian. “The elders would camp all over along through here.”

When fur trappers and gold prospectors arrived, the Kootenai Indians ferried them across the Kootenai River in their trademark sturgeon-nosed canoes.

“Some charged and some didn’t,” White said. “The Indians sometimes would do it for the pleasure of it. Some would trade something like food or firearms for the Indians to go hunting with.”

But as the rush for gold in British Columbia’s Wild Horse mines gained momentum, Walla Walla businessman Edwin L. Bonner decided to head north, too. When he got to the Kootenai River in 1864, he saw a business opportunity.

Through negotiations with Chief Abraham, Bonner purchased land on both sides of the river for a ferry and trading post just south of where the railroad bridge stands today. The ferry Bonner built was attached to a cable that spanned the river.

A pulley system operated by the ferry’s captain propelled the wooden craft.

The ferry brought more strangers to the valley and trappings of the white man’s world. As one story goes, when the first house cat came across on the ferry, Chief Abraham thought it was a tamed wildcat and offered to trade seven horses for it.

Bonner leased the ferry business to Richard Fry in 1875. He was long gone by the time the villages of Eatonville and Bonnerport joined on April 1, 1899, forming Bonners Ferry.

At the procession Thursday, the Kootenai Tribe will present the city of Bonners Ferry with a special plaque commemorating the deal struck between the tribe and Bonner.

“We were hoping to actually get a ferry, but we were not successful,” said Velma Bahe, tribal chairman. “We did not get started early enough.”

The tribe was already planning its own festivities to mark the end of the century when invited to join the centennial committee. Tribal members are holding a huge powwow June 4-6 to honor their ancestors.

It might even outdo the powwows held by White’s grandfather, Harry Sam, on the Kootenai flats during Bonners Ferry’s early years. In those days, many powwows were an excuse to gamble.

“They’d come from all over - Washington, Montana, Canada,” White said.

The city’s centennial committee has embraced the powwow as part of the year-long celebration.

“It’s kind of neat that they’re hand-in-hand helping us celebrate this,” Morgan said.

Canadians also will take part. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police will join the color guard, as well as a bagpiper from Creston, B.C.

Ties with Canada are strong in Bonners Ferry. Most Kootenai Indians, including White, can claim blood ties, since many of their nomadic ancestors wound up citizens of Canada after the international border was drawn.

Commerce between the Nelson, B.C., area and Bonners Ferry was common. Steamboats used to ply the deep waters of the Kootenai River between the two countries.

Evelyn Ruhberg remembers watching the steamboats as a child, but she never got to ride one. Ruhberg, 80, is the curator of the Boundary County Museum.

“Everyone tells me I’m part of the museum,” she jokes.

The river’s role in the town history is both that of an ally and an enemy.

Among Ruhberg’s earliest memories of downtown Bonners Ferry is gripping her father’s pant-legs to keep from falling off the raised, plank walkways - some of which were only two planks wide. The walkways and storefronts were several feet off the ground to keep pedestrians and goods out of the floodwaters.

“That’s the reason so many floors didn’t have carpet,” Ruhberg explained. “People, they were pioneers and just waited until the water went down and cleaned it up.”

Old photographs in the museum depict the resourceful residents boating around downtown. One pair of men fashioned a boat from a coffin.

With the construction of the Libby Dam, which began in 1966, the destructive downtown floods were relegated to the past.

Among the other changes in Bonners Ferry is an influx of newcomers and a lost sense of small-town community. As a kid, White remembers, “everybody was friendly.”

Now, a summer day averages about 12,000 vehicles passing through Bonners Ferry. Some strangers stay, and some natives move away, loosening the community ties little by little.

Centennial organizers hope to tighten those ties and create annual events that will persist in the new century - like a never-ending quilting bee.

“We’re a rural community, so we’re struggling to maintain our businesses and business base,” Morgan said. “Anything we can do to work together to make it fun for people to get together and shop and support our community, our schools and hospital, is good for the community.”