Map of Potlatch city

Potlatch is a city in the northwest United States, located in north central Idaho in Latah County, about six miles (10 km) east of the border with Washington. On the Palouse north of Moscow, it is served by State Highway 6, and bordered on the northeast by the small community of Onaway. The population of Potlatch was 804 at the 2010 census.

Online Interactive Map

Click on to view map in "full screen" mode.

Potlatch location map. Where is Potlatch city?

History

Company town

In 1903, Frederick Weyerhaeuser incorporated the Potlatch Lumber Company (eventually becoming the Potlatch Corporation), naming his son Charles as the President. The directors of the company selected Canadian lumberman William Deary to build a mill somewhere within the company’s timber holdings. The townsite was chosen because of proximity to the company’s large holdings of Western White Pine on the Palouse River. Potlatch was chosen as the mill site, and in 1904, crews working under W.A. Wilkinson of Minnesota began constructing what would be the largest white pine sawmill in the world.

Because of the remote placement of the mill, Potlatch was built as a company town to provide housing and commerce for the mill. A total of 143 houses were built in 1906, with 58 more built the following year; other building constructed during that period include boarding houses, an ice house, a Catholic church, hotel, school, and general store.

The company developed and ran Potlatch on a model mostly patterned after that used by Pullman Company for its company town in Illinois. It provide police and fire protection, a school, churches, a hospital, an inexpensive company store, and recreational amenities. It banned prostitution, prohibited alcohol, and encouraged its workers to marry by allowing only married couples to rent the houses it owned. The paternalism was profitable, even though rents were low: during 1943 the company showed a profit of $59,000 for its “townsite” services. Less than a decade later, with labor costs significantly reducing its townsite profit, the mill sold most of the homes and other buildings it owned, and Potlatch was incorporated.

The mill began operating on September 11, 1906, and operated for several more decades. Due to a depressed economy and declining lumber prices, the mill closed in August 1981.

Following the mill’s closure

In 1981 the mill was shut down, shortly after the town was sold to the residents. Five years later, part of the town’s commercial district, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

After the mill’s closure, Potlatch became a bedroom community for the university towns of Moscow and Pullman, Washington.

Business and political leaders of Potlatch are making a concerted effort to attract companies involved in the firearms industry; they have set aside 26 acres (11 ha) for such businesses, located on the former site of the mill.

Potlatch Road Map

Potlatch city Satellite Map

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 0.43 square miles (1.11 km), all of it land. Potlatch is north of the confluence of Rock Creek and the Palouse River, on the edge of the Palouse ecoregion.

See also