Lochsa River Canyon

n the morning of September 15, 1805, Old Toby, the Corps' Lemhi-Shoshone guide, led the party down the canyon "over Steep points rockey & buschey as usial," according to Clark. Private Whitehouse added that they "crossed Several Springs and Swampy places covred with white ceeder and tall handsom Spruce pine, which would be excelent for boards or Shingles." crossed several springs & swampey places," as well as "a Creek & a small pond which lay a small distance below it."

Those "Steep points" where the river has shouldered its way between rocky mountainsides, are marked today by road cuts, which were necessary in order to make room for the highway that was completed through this stretch in the 1950s. Late in the 19th century the creek and the small pond were named Papoose and Whitehouse, respectively.

The "white ceeder" was the western redcedar; which is the more suitable for shingles, and is commonly known as "shinglewood." The "tall handsom Spruce pine" was the tall (50 to 100 feet), fragrant, dark-green Engelmann spruce—"slender as a church spire."¹ This tree's straight stems have often been used as telephone poles, though its most sublime destiny, owing to its singularly resonant quality that derives from the consistently fine, soft, straight grain, has long been used for violin bodies and piano sounding boards. In the 1990s many Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii Parry ex Engelm)² stands throughout the Bitterroots were decimated by an infestation of spruce bark beetles.

From 1,200 feet in the air the river that Lewis and Clark later named "Koos koos kee"—which they understood meant "clear water"—looks placid, but at water level it is a continuous staircase of rapids that justifies the old Indian name, Lochsa, meaning "rough water." Along the thin line of U.S. 12 the way is level and smooth. The "springs & swampey places" that haven't been covered over are inconsiderable from the motorist's perspective. But the narrow canyon bottom binds the road to the riverbank so tightly that the sharply interlocked curves warrant a posted speed limit of 55 mph.

The roads winding through the mountains at right and at lower left are gravel-surfaced forest access routes to timber extraction sites. The light-green areas are sites that have been "clear-cut"—all trees have been removed, and seedlings have been planted in order to restore the timber. Forest access roads are also used by hunters and other recreationists.

--Joseph Mussulman, 09/04; rev. 08/2012

1. Donald Ross Peattie, A Natural History of Western Trees (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), 135, 217-18. Peattie believed (p. 218) that at their camp on the Clearwater River the Corps of Discovery hewed their six dugout canoes from western redcedar. However, Clark had said (on September 25, 1805) that the trees he chose were "large Pine." In 1826 the trees he referred to were officially named Pinus ponderosa—literally "large pine"—by botanist David Douglas.

Sergeant Ordway claimed that Clark's "large Pine" trees were "pitch pines." But although as a native New Hampshireman he certainly would have seen the latter around his home in Merrimack County, there was a gap in his memory. Pitch pine (Pinus rigida) is native to eastern North America from Maine and Ohio to Kentucky and Georgia, mostly in small mixed stands. The 1.1-million-acre Pinelands National Reserve in New Jersey is the largest single-species stand of the species. Although the needles of the pitch pine are grouped in fascicles of three, as are those of the Rocky Mountains' ponderosa pine, the similarities between the two species end there. In many parts of their range, pitch pines are often shrubby and gnarly, and the needles growing out of its bark clearly distinguish it from all other species of pine. At best it can reach a height of 40 to 70 feet, with occasional specimens reaching 100 feet (30m), and a maximum diameter of 35 inches (.9 m). Pitch pine has little value as saw timber because its multiple trunks are more or less curved, knotty, and resinous, characteristics which also would have precluded them from afterlife as dugout canoes. Their best use is as pulpwood; otherwise, the nearest they come to being commercially valuable is their suitability for 6-foot milled fenceposts or, when young, as Christmas trees. Still, since the turn of the present century the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the USDA has actively sought to restore Pinus rigida to the few remaining habitats in places like New Hampshire's Merrimack County, mainly for the sake of the small wildlife species that once depended on it. Plants Database; Flora of North America, vol. 2; Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Native Plant Information Network.

The explorers could easily recognize the differences between pine and "white ceedar," often mistaking the latter for arborvitae—western redcedar, Thuja plicata. Besides, Engelmann spruce thrives in high, cold environments on the ridges of the Bitterroot Mountains, and not in the hot, dry habitat of the Clearwater River canyon where the expedition hewed their second flotilla of dugout canoes.

2. Picea [pie-SEE-a] is a Latin word for spruce; engelmannii [eng-gull-MAH-nee-eye] commemorates the German physician and botanist George Engelmann (1809-1884), of Saint Louis, Missouri, who was an authority on conifers of the northwest and cacti of the southwest.

Funded in part by a grant from the Idaho Governor's Lewis and Clark Trail Committee.