Coeur d’Alene Scenic Byway paves way to ghosttown Medimont, scenic Carlin Bay, and more

Smoke settled thick over the Silver Valley as we swung off Interstate 90 at Cataldo and onto the White Pine Scenic Byway.

The mountains blurred, as if history itself had been smudged into the horizon.

This route was named for the forests it once carried: the mighty Western white pine, Idaho’s state tree, which once stretched across the north like an empire of green. In the early 1900s, more than half the standing timber in the state was white pine. Then came the loggers, the sawmills and the blister rust disease that swept through and decimated the trees.

The road carried us through marshland dotted with lily pads, pine forests thick enough to swallow sound and lakes that winked in the haze. In the distance, a moose moved like a rumor, a dark blur in the tall grasses that lined the side of creek to the Coeur d’Alene River. Of course, the lens I didn’t pack – the 200 mm – was the one I needed. But maybe that was the point. Some wild things demand awe, not capture.

We pulled off at Medicine Lake, a quiet gem in the chain of lakes that formed when dams reshaped the valley. The water sat still, framed by mountains in the distance – photographer’s candy.

That’s when Medimont beckoned. A bustling steamboat landing and rail stop on the river in the early 1900s, dams downstream raised the water level of the Chain Lakes nearly a dozen feet. Low-lying farmland and homes were swallowed.

Parts of old Medimont are now beneath the waterline, ghosts under the waves. Search for some addresses on Google Maps and you’re well off of what today’s shoreline is.

The old mercantile still stands next to a trailhead for the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes. It was built in 1912, and now is beautifully restored and a private residence.

Next door, the opposite fate: a house collapsed in on itself, its floors carpeted with mouse droppings and – strangely – piles of empty dairy containers. Too many to ignore. Why so many? Nobody was around to ask and the ghosts weren’t answering us.

In the wreckage, my friend tugged a page of The Spokesman-Review out of the dust: the sports agate page, small print for a big life. Later, with a little hockey-nerd sleuthing, I traced it to Dec. 30, 1987 – the day Greg Batters was traded from the Western Hockey League’s Victoria Cougars to the Moose Jaw Warriors and the day the U.S. ski Association stripped Kerry Lynch of his world championship silver medal in a doping scandal.

Was that the last day this house was truly alive?

A little research reveals the house belonged to the Hanson family, and it may have been, according to Mary Mills, a historian and docent of the Crane House Museum in Harrison, the Medimont post office at one time.

Records reveal the property may have been donated to Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation in 2019.

We carried on to Harrison, where the Haul Ass to Harrison Show ’n’ Shine had the streets crammed with chrome and candy paint. We ducked into the Crane House Museum, where history survives on volunteer grit and yard-sale fundraisers. Five bucks for a breadmaker? Done. A ceramic breadbox to go with it for $8? Woohoo!

Cat House, featured months ago in these pages as a lookout historian, got her fill of time with Mills, the local history expert who also keeps the Harrison Searchlight community newsletter alive.

Cowboy Steve regaled us with stories of his singing and the car accident decades ago that should have left him paralyzed.

Bella soaked up her celebrity scritches, tail sweeping like a metronome, and – rare gift – we met another Maremma dog. A once-in-a-blue-moon moment.

Ice cream was required, of course, before we wound north along the Lake Coeur d’Alene Scenic Byway. Later, Carlin Bay was a perfect rest stop for burgers at the Lodge food truck and a dip in the water at the public beach.

The byway carried us home, a road with scars and stories: forests stripped and regrown, towns risen and fallen, and a shoreline now dotted with McMansions of the wealthy, a jarring contrast to the grit and history that built this valley.

Through it all, Bella rode shotgun, steady as the Selkirks, reminding me the best fuel isn’t coffee or road burgers. It’s the company you keep, the ghosts that whisper history, and the stories still hiding in the smoke and pines.