The Fight for the Pend Oreille River
A local congressman intervenes to prevent a federal shutdown of river improvements, sparking a debate over land rights and conservation.
A report unfavorable to the removal of obstructions in the Pend Oreille river at Albeni Falls has been made to congress by Acting Secretary of War Dickinson. However, the blow to Sandpoint and other localities interested in the improvement has been robbed of its sting by the active intervention of Congressman Thomas R. Hamer, who has procured for Idaho a day in court. Immediately upon his arrival in Washington, Hamer took up the matter with the chief engineer of the army and discovered that a report bearing upon the desired improvement was already in the process of preparation with negative recommendations. In Hamer's opinion, the Sandpoint Commercial Club and others concerned had not been given a proper hearing, and he succeeded in having the report modified to include a recommendation for a further survey. Meanwhile, a petition is circulating in Metaline and the lower river against the withdrawal of land along the river between Crescent and the boundary. Homesteaders are being held up by the government, and critics argue that Secretary Ballinger is unjustified in holding the country up for corporations while the rights of individual miners and homesteaders are ignored in the name of a 'conservation fad.'
“If the country is held up merely so that these water power sites can be appraised and sold under this new conservation fad, then the withdrawal is an outrage.”
This 1910 dispute over federal land withdrawal and water rights mirrors modern tensions in the Pacific Northwest, where the balance between public conservation and private resource access remains a central civic conflict.
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