OUR GEM: Restoration turns back the clock at Hepton Lake
Last year, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe wrapped up construction on an ambitious wetland restoration project that has been in the works for more than a decade. The Snyihms he mulshu’lmkhw Project (Swimmer’s Landing among the Cottonwoods) is located along the bank of the lower St. Joe River in a place that Tribal people referred to as emish n(ilemn, meaning “waiting for the animal place.” The site formerly was a floodplain marsh and wet meadow, regularly inundated by floods from the river. The presence of culturally significant plants and wildlife supported a high level of use by the Coeur d’Alene People.
This place hasn’t looked anything like it did in the old days for quite some time. Levees were built in the late 1930s to isolate the river from the broad valley bottom to allow for farming. The native vegetation was plowed under and replaced by annual crops. A major challenge for farming was that the operations at the Post Falls Dam — more than 44 miles away — made the area considerably wetter during the growing season, despite the presence of the man-made levee. Consequently, farmers had to employ a complex system of drainage ditches and pumps to dry the site down enough to produce a crop.
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