Treasure trove

Did you ever want to take home a 9-foot-tall Alaskan brown bear? How about sitting high in a saddle that belonged to a gunslinger in St. Louis during the 1870s? Two bullet holes included. Or how about holding in your hands the Sacajawea peace pipe given to Chief Looking Glass by Lewis and Clark?

Well you can, and you don’t have to go very far, since all of these things are for sale at Cisco’s, a remarkable antique and antiquities treasure trove in downtown Coeur d’Alene.

Owners Sam and Denise Kennedy have created what might be considered a store and a museum in our own back yard.

You can find saddles adorned with enough silver to use in the Rose Bowl Parade, a Native American beaded dress from 1858, and a rifle that dates from the pilgrims. There’s even a saddle owned by the original Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore.

Sam Kennedy has appeared on HGTV and also the Dick Idol’s Discoveries Series on the Sports and Field Channel.

The Kennedys own the George Custer Travalian Station Collection, which consists of Custer’s wedding uniform, his general’s sword, a lock of his hair and his writing desk. The exhibit is now on loan to the Civil War museum in Harrisburg, Pa., and is worth more than $10 million.

How does he know that stuff was really Custer’s? The sword was checked against records of Tiffany’s, where it originally came from, the desk went to Virginia Polytechnic Institute to match handwriting samples found in the ink pads, and the lock of hair was a match with Custer’s DNA.

Cisco’s is one of the largest collection of authentic artifacts of American antiquities. Among the rows of items can be found an original newspaper that was printed the day after President Abraham Lincoln was shot, an original reward poster listing all of the ransom bills paid in the Charles Lindbergh case which, Kennedy adds, was handled by Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf’s father.

Books, stuffed grizzlies, moose heads, dishes, lamps, sleigh bells, rifles, and even a stained-glass window out of a church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright – Cisco’s has it all, including the largest collection of Black Forest carvings in the United States.

The Kennedys have scouts and connections all over the country who are always on the lookout for great buys. Sam Kennedy said his customers are primarily people who have summer homes in the area and want special one-of-a-kind items in their house. They are people with second and third homes here and in Aspen, Lake Tahoe or Jackson Hole, for example.

There are more than 20,000 people on Cisco’s mailing list, but the Kennedys get most of their business through word of mouth. “Our ideal piece has historical importance, is highly visual and is investment quality,” Sam Kennedy said.

The most requested items are paintings, flasks, pistols and rifles, and also famous signatures, such as outdoorsman and author Zane Gray.

It has taken the Kennedys years to learn how to recognize reproductions and find that special purchase for their buyers, in addition to a lot of reading and studying and a very large support group of people who know antiquities.

Sam and Denise Kennedy and their two sons, Colton and Rider, love living in Coeur d’Alene. They even opened a second shop in Shops at the Coeur d’Alene resort and have an inventory of early American quilts and furniture at The Red Barn or “Joe’s Place” in Green Bluff Orchards.

If you have never paid a visit to Cisco’s, it’s worth a stop to see a part of our country’s history, where it has come from and where it is today.