North Idaho Journal: Spooky things going on in Spirit Lake

I live across the alley from an old, haunted theater. There are nights when my kids have trouble getting to sleep because of this. So, to me it’s a wonder that anyone can sleep, or even dares go out at night, around Spirit Lake.

The name itself testifies to the fact that the lake is haunted, and the name was no accident of history. The lake was given the name because it was haunted first.

Here are the facts, straight from Robert Singletary’s 1994 writings on local history, “Kootenai Chronicles: A History of Kootenai County,” published by The Museum of North Idaho.

The daughter of a local Indian chief ran off to be with a young brave with whom she had fallen in love. Knowing that they would be found and separated forever, they went to a promontory overlooking a lake and jumped to their deaths in the water below. Their bodies were never recovered.

The lake they jumped into had been named “Tesemini,” “Lake of Spirits,” by the Indians long before the suicide because the spirit Tesemini was known to live there. It was Tesemini that carried their bodies away. It was the translation of Tesemini that gave Kootenai County’s Spirit Lake its name.

Please, don’t anyone tell my kids.

At the time of the 2000 census, only nine of the 1,376 residents of Spirit Lake were of Native American descent. On a percent-basis, that’s the fewest Indians for any community in the county, even Hayden. See, most Indians of the region understand the legend and have stayed away.

Spirit Lake, possibly because Tesemini isn’t happy with development, has not had as progressive a history as most parts of Kootenai County. There are roughly 12 miles of shoreline to the lake itself, but most of this is privately owned and not accessible by road. At the northeastern corner of the lake is where all development has centered, going back to Native American times.

In 1907, the Panhandle Lumber Co. was organized and built a mill and mill pond at that corner and the Spirit Lake Land Co. began selling lots in the town. In fact, the first building in town was the sales office which today, 100 years later, is still in use as the home of Sondahl Pottery – Brad Sondahl is one of Spirit Lake’s biggest boosters and best photographers ( www.sondahl.com/spiritlake). The town itself was incorporated a year later, 1908, as “The Village of Spirit Lake.”

Within a few years there was a railroad connection to Spokane and the Silver Beach Resort was built a few years after that. In the early 1900s, Spirit Lake was one of the more popular resort and vacation areas in the Inland Empire, but a stable, year-round community just never seemed to take hold. A forest fire in the late 1930s destroyed the mill, and industry, too, seemed to evade Spirit Lake after that.

If the spirits wanted the lake left relatively undisturbed, they seem to have had their way.

Today the lake is known mainly for its fishing, and the Silver Beach Resort is still in operation. The area has also become known among mountain bikers and hikers as the back door into the eastern wilds of Mount Spokane via the Brickle Creek Valley. The mountain itself dominates the view to the west from the lake.

According to Sondahl, half the businesses along the main street have stood empty for the last 25 years, at least. Currently, Spirit Lake lacks an employment base and many of the normal services of a town are missing. Compared with the rest of Kootenai County, unemployment is higher and level of education is lower, and the crime rate is often higher than the average for the United States as a whole.

Recently, however, Timberlake Junior High and High School was built in Spirit Lake and last December Inland Northwest Bank announced plans to open a branch in town. Spirit Lake has also, in recent years, become world famous for its “Big Back-In” lawn mower street drags ( www.bigbackin.com). For one weekend a year, with its modified riding mowers, Spirit Lake becomes “Mowertown.”

Even so, to this day, there are spooky, unexplainable things going on in Spirit Lake. One is that the Spirit Lake Chamber of Commerce thinks there are only 860 people in town. Another is a gigantic blue and white, old-fashioned coffee pot with a yellow rose on its side that is so big, some people think it’s a water tower.

And finally, and scariest of all, Spirit Lake is the home of the “Idaho Observer,” a newspaper which seeks to give a voice to a certain, neglected group of people. According to the paper, “the dominant media generally labels these people as extremists, right-wingers, conspiracy theorists – or worse.” See, there really are spirits in Spirit Lake.