Bonners Ferry, Idaho: The Crown Jewel of the Northwest
A heaven for outdoor recreation and civic pride, Bonners Ferry is a great place you’ve (maybe) never heard of.
October/November 2009
By Joe Hart
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Bonners Ferry, Idaho, sits on the northern stretch of the Kootenai River. The local Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative is a leader in watershed preservation and has worked to clean up the river and its tributaries.
TIM CADY
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For every great place, there are stories that crystallize its hidden qualities and bring them to the fore. (After you read about Bonners Ferry, check out the 10 other towns in the 2009 list of Great Places You’ve (Maybe) Never Heard Of.) In Bonners Ferry, Idaho, a logging town on the northern stretch of the Kootenai River, one such moment came in 2006, when Atlanta transplant Carolyn Testa opened Groove Studio, an art gallery housed in an old bank building downtown. Groove Studio is run as a co-op — local and regional artists rent wall space and keep 100 percent of their sales. What’s surprising is that more than two dozen artists, in a county of less than 10,000 people, stepped forward to display their works.
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Why such a high density of artists? “We’re known as the crown jewel of the Northwest, and we have incredible access to mountain ranges,” Testa says. “Beauty attracts an artistic mind-set.”
It helps to some degree that the region includes Sandpoint, a tourist town 30 miles to the south where there’s a thriving gallery scene, an international film festival and the popular Schweitzer Mountain ski resort. But while Sandpoint has developed its tourist trade, Bonners Ferry remained a logging town until fairly recently.
The town’s 15 minutes of fame came in 1975 when the local Kootenai tribe declared war on the United States. The bloodless war lasted just three days, and won the tribe official recognition by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and a land concession that formed the heart of a new reservation. Today, the tribe is a regional leader in environmental efforts, including the Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative, a watershed preservation alliance that has been instrumental in restoring the health of the river and its tributaries.
