Popular park not always so

Fifty years ago today, a bachelor pioneer gave the citizens of Idaho a 5,000-acre gift and $50,000 for its future maintenance.

The pioneer, Virgil T. McCroskey, even promised to care for the tract of land for the next 15 years – he made the promise when he was 79 years old. McCroskey didn’t quite keep his promise, though. He stopped working on the park, which is located about 50 miles south of Coeur d’Alene, when he was just shy of his 94th birthday. He died a few weeks later.

The state of Idaho wasn’t exactly a gracious recipient of the gift, according to Jeri McCroskey, the wife of the pioneer’s nephew. “Idaho neglected it,” she said.

Until the late 1980s, Idaho allowed McCroskey’s ridgeline park to fall into disarray. Signs hung by McCroskey rotted and fell from trees. Trails and picnic areas became overgrown. A group of relatives and local residents eventually were successful, however, in opening the state’s eyes to the potential of the forested tract, which sits like an oasis above the Palouse prairie, Jeri McCroskey said.

The area is now a haven for picnickers, hikers, horseback riders, cyclists and all-terrain vehicle enthusiasts. About 50 miles of trails cover the park, said Terry Doupe, president of Friends of McCroskey Park. Nature lovers also flock to the park because of its abundance of different climate zones, from grassland to moist cedar forest.

“It’s a family park,” Doupe said. “People like the views, they like the quiet.”

In spring, park-goers can even see yellow blooms from daffodils planted decades ago by McCroskey. To ensure the daffodils would grow, McCroskey even hauled water to the young plants. Years later, much to his horror, he came upon members of a local garden club digging up the bulbs for their own garden, Jeri McCroskey said, laughing.

In 1946, McCroskey also gave Steptoe Butte to residents of Washington. The area is now a state park.

McCroskey, a Washington State University graduate, had a deep love for the forested landscape near his family’s homestead. He came west with his family as a toddler to the Palouse prairie from Tennessee.

Although he never had kids of his own, he raised the orphaned children of his sister.

After his adopted children moved on, McCroskey, a pharmacist and owner of a drugstore in nearby Colfax, had the time and money to travel. He visited the national parks and spent time in Asia.

“He was impressed by the country’s park system,” Jeri McCroskey said. “He liked the idea that you could drive through the parks.”

The 18-mile-long Skyline Drive now traverses the park McCroskey named in honor of his mother, Mary Minerva McCroskey.

“He thought life for pioneer women was a lot harder than for pioneer men,” Jeri McCroskey explained.