Lewiston - Clarkston, Idaho, 1905

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In 1905, Lewiston and Clarkston sat across the Snake River from each other at the mouth of the Clearwater, a meeting of waterways that had shaped the settlement since the gold rush era. Lewiston, the older town and Idaho's first territorial capital in the 1860s, served as a river port where sternwheelers carried wheat and other goods downriver toward the Columbia. The Camas Prairie Railroad, completed to Lewiston in 1898, brought grain down from the high plateau above the town, and the wheat trade drove much of the local economy. Clarkston, on the Washington side, grew as a supply and farming center for the surrounding Palouse and Clearwater country. Residents of both towns would have known the valley chiefly for its grain, its river traffic, and the steep grade that linked the bottomlands to the prairie above.

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