The shore of Lake Pend Oreille in Sandpoint has a beautiful sandy beach where families set up beach umbrellas in mid-summer.
Roseberry offers a glimpse of how the early settlers from Finland lived.
Enjoying its heyday in the early 1900s, Roseberry is now a ghost town.
to the winding trails through the ponderosa woods from the campground, but as soon as we got a few paces away from the campsites we had the trails to ourselves. A few miles south on a side road off of SR-55 we found an entirely different type of excursion as we wandered through the historic homesteads of the region’s earliest settlers from Finland. Roseberry is a small townsite that is now a museum, and the buildings are open to visitors to wander through. Those early Finns were hardy souls, and the unique building techniques they brought from Finland made their homes and shops strong enough to endure. In its heyday during the early 1900s, Roseberry Townsite was home to a hotel, two blacksmith shops, a butcher shop, a loggingmill, a creamery, anda restaurant. Unfortunately for the residents, the Pacific, Idaho, and Northern Railway didn’t come through Roseberry but instead came through the town of Donnelly just two miles to the west, and Roseberry gradually dwindled into a ghost town. Surprisingly, many of the townsfolks saw the writing on the wall and hitched their homes to wagons and moved them over to Donnelly so they wouldn’t miss out on the boom happening there. Just a few miles south of Donnelly on SR-55 we came across Lake Cascade. In contrast to bustling Payette Lake and the vibrant town of McCall, Lake Cascade is small
and quiet. Anglers and boaters plied the water here too, far from the festive but busy beach scene in McCall. While the Interstates are wonderful for getting our RV from one place to another in a hurry, we loved our tours on the back roads of Idaho. Now we are eagerly looking forward to returning once again so we can explore a little more.
FOR MORE INFORMATION Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1: www4vip.inl.gov/ebr/ Mackay: www.mackayidaho-city.com
Challis: www.challischamber.com Salmon: www.salmonidaho.com Sandpoint: www.cityofsandpoint.com Moscow: www.ci.moscow.id.us Roseberry Township: www.historicroseberry.com Donnelly: www.cityofdonnelly.org
IDAHO SCENIC BACKROADS
COAST TO COAST SUMMER MAGAZINE 2018
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