The Rathdrum Prairie died today.

It died from a variety of causes, natural and unnatural, as well as a lack of interest on the part of benefactors responsible for its well-being and nurture.

In the beginning, it was a wide open space, separating rural prairie towns, providing an income source for persistent farmers who birthed a $125 million industry from its stubborn, rocky soil. In its glory days, the prairie sprouted green grass fields from Post Falls to Rathdrum, providing visual relief for miles and a giant filter for the underground river below, the source of drinking water for 500,000 people.

In the 1970s, after reaching adulthood, the prairie suffered its first bout with the illness that eventually killed it – progress. It recovered after close friends at the Panhandle Health District lobbied successfully to limit septic systems on the prairie, forcing growth into established towns.

Some thought the prairie would go on forever in the happy days that followed.

But a dark cloud emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the hospitality industry took hold in Coeur d’Alene and surrounding cities grew. Visitors and tourists complained about the dark cloud caused on warm autumn days by grass-seed farmers burning their fields. What once was an established practice appeared anachronistic as newcomers joined the chorus against field smoke. So started the annual controversy among the farmers, the hospitality industry and clean-air advocates, with the farmers losing ground – literally and figuratively – every year.

Facing a second bout with progress, the verdant prairie shrank rapidly, loved to death by the farmers who refused to eschew field burning for a new technology to drive yield; coveted by developers who realized how easy it was to grow houses on the prairie’s flat land; ignored by timid elected officials who said just this week that there’s not much more that can be done; grieved by friends who couldn’t slow the spread of streets, sidewalks and subdivisions.

At the Kootenai County courthouse, commissioners provided lip service for preservation but little action as 1,000 acres of the prairie vanished each year. At Post Falls, city officials couldn’t approve housing tracts fast enough in their pell-mell rush to grow bigger than Coeur d’Alene. At Hayden, elected officials grabbed chunks of the prairie to prevent it from being annexed to Coeur d’Alene. At Rathdrum, farmers, tired of being harassed by neighbors and clean-air advocates, cashed in on their land and retired. No one had the passion or the creativity to address the prairie’s decline, except to form a committee or two.

The prairie is survived by dozens of farmers who finally were driven off their land, an aquifer it had protected from time immemorial, untold numbers of animals that had inhabited it, five towns that smothered it, a county that failed to act, and thousands of fans who’ll miss its open spaces.

There will be no viewing for the prairie, except in history books yet to be written.

Donations will not be accepted in memory of the Rathdrum Prairie. It’s too late for that now.