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The shores of Spirit Lake served as a site for summer homes for several years. This traffic was gradually lost to the auto and regular passenger service on the I&WN ended in January 1937. Spirit Lake was an attraction that brought summer excursion trains for vacationers in the early years. The Panhandle Lumber Company office building is now the Fireside Lodge near the millpond. The main source of income for the 2,000 or so residents living here ended in 1939 when a fire took a portion of the lumber company property and the remainder was moved out of the area. The sawmill produced 125,000 feet of lumber per 10-hour day. Earlier railroads curved around stumps but I&WN was noted for its unusual amount of tangent track. The roadbed was of such excellence that the first passenger trains rocked along at 35 miles per hour. The railroad through this area was built mostly by hand with very little machinery available. Spokane, and from Spirit Valley, was sawed into lumber and transported by railcars on the Idaho & Washington Northern Railroad. A large sawmill was built and timber from the vast, and previously untouched, forest east of Mt. Blackwell, formed the Panhandle Lumber and the Blackwell Lumber Companies. Spokane, built log flumes and floated the logs down to the lake where they were towed to the sawmill near the City of Spirit Lake. Loggers took timber tools to the head of the lake, near the foot of Mt. The Chautauqua Players often performed on a plot of land near the west end of the bridge. A dirt and rock fill has replaced that bridge.
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A high bridge was built over the channel that connects the lake with the area that later became the millpond. Homes were built on the lakeshore and Spirit Lake became a resort town. Ladies in long dresses, complete with leg o'mutton sleeves and high necks, adorned in enormous picture hats - escorted by men in suits, high collars and flat straw skimmers - wended their way past the hill park and up Maine Street to the town. Railway travelers from Spokane were discharged at the big brick depot located at the foot of the lake hill. Platted in 1907 by engineers from Pennsylvania, the town was opened to real estate investors in 1910 when most streets, business buildings, utilities and first houses were completed. As the lake ice floes melt and grind together in springtime, weird, mournful and haunting sounds are heard, are these the cries of the Indian lovers as they seek release from the Lake of the Spirits? As the lovers were never found, folklore tells us that on a moonlit night, when the wind is still, you may see their shadowy silhouettes as they drift across the lake in a phantom canoe. Binding themselves together with the 'marriage chain of rushes' they leaped into the lake from Suicide Cliff. The Indian Maid and her Brave were dismayed and vowed their eternal love. To avert war, Hya-Pam's father consented to the marriage. He threatened war on the Kootenays if he was not allowed to wed Hya-Pam. Hostile tribes lived east of here, governed by an ancient chief, Pu-Pu-Mox-Mox (Yellow Serpent). Hyas-Tyee-Skookum-Tum-Tum (Good Chieftains) of the Kootenai Tribe had a lovely daughter, Hya-Pam (Fearless Running Water) who loved a kootenay Brave, Hasht-Eel-Ame-Hoom (Shining Eagle). Legend has it that our lake was once called "Clear Water." A romantic story experienced by the Kootenay (Water People) Indians who lived on the shores of the unique lake influenced them into changing the name to "Tesemini" or "Lake of the Spirits."