In memory of rails along the trail

By RALPH BARTHOLDT

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — Almost 130 years ago, the first railroad to reach Coeur d’Alene ran down Third Street to the docks.

The line was built by D. C. Corbin to bring visitors to town and haul ore from the Coeur d’Alene mining district to places west.

If there is anything left of Corbin’s line, it exists in the mind of Coeur d’Alene architect Jon Mueller, who is working on a plan at the behest of the North Idaho Centennial Trail Foundation to incorporate the history of the area’s railroads into a plaza along the trail at Riverstone.

The Centennial Trail Midway Project is being planned for a piece of land between the trail and Tilford Lane west of Beebe Boulevard not far from the pond at Riverstone.

Before it happens though, the city of Coeur d’Alene, which is a major landowner at the site, must wave it through.

Doug Eastwood, former city parks director who is a liaison for the Centennial Trail Foundation, said the latest plan requires the city to reserve its former Union Pacific Railroad right of way, setting it aside for the work ahead.

“We can’t kick off a fundraiser or anything unless you’re on board,” Eastwood told the city’s parks and recreation board. “It’s the encumbering of the corridor that helps us do that.”

City parks director Bill Greenwood said the project began in earnest more than a year ago with the discussion of a proposed green belt between Tilford Lane and the trail at Riverstone that was unused.

“(It’s) no-man’s land, just native stands of grasses and weeds that we mow,” Greenwood said.

The idea to turn the narrow 1½-acre swath of grass — property belonging to several owners, including the city and the trail foundation — into a green belt incorporating a plaza commemorating the rail lines that are the foundation of North Idaho’s bicycle and walking trails, sounded good, Greenwood said.

“It’s grander than I had initially thought of as a green belt,” he said.

The concept, if built out to its potential, including a space for vendors in a tree-lined setting, Mueller said, would cost about $500,000. It includes extensive landscaping, as well as the building of the memorial modeled after a railroad roundhouse.

At Monday’s meeting, Mueller gave board members a rundown of the area’s mining and logging history and the trains that made it happen.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, “Lumbering took over,” Mueller said. “We hauled a lot of logs and a lot of timber from the waterfront of Coeur d’Alene.”

Seven intercontinental railroads made up Coeur d’Alene’s transportation fabric as well as an electric line between Spokane and Coeur d’Alene built by F.A. Blackwell.

Mueller said the plaza and railroad memorial has a lot of material to draw from.

“There’s all kinds of constructs and things we can carry forward in this memorial,” he said. “We can tell a really terrific story about the railroads in Coeur d’Alene.”

Parks and Rec commissioners will further review the plans for the green belt and railroad memorial in a future workshop.