In 1897, the Santa area boomed with prospectors after gold was discovered in Tyson Creek and the St. Maries River. In 1902, Santa became the first town in Idaho to be platted by a woman, Sarah Renfro. She was a capable entrepreneur that helped to develop the area by selling lots and establishing the post office, hotel and store near the St. Maries River.
The area’s larger town, St. Maries, developed around a hundred years ago when Joseph Fisher decided that the junction of the St. Maries and St. Joseph rivers would be a good place for a sawmill. Timber and transportation and a good quality of life have remained the principal motivations for St. Maries. Transportation improved and so did the distance that logs could be economically transported to the local mills.
After the turn of the 20th Century, the city was incorporated. By then, two larger mills had been built and the steamboats which plied the St. Joe’s River and Coeur d'Alene Lake provided cheap, rapid transportation. The late arrival of the transcontinental Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad in 1909, plus the opening of the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation to homesteading, provided futher stimuli for growth in the early part of the last century. The Milwaukee Road pushed a branch line south and east to Elk River and numerous narrow-gauge logging railroads crisscrossed the area.
World War I increased the demand on the lumber industry. And in spite of the tremendous loss of timber in the Fire of 1910, there was still plenty of virgin stands to meet the demand of sawmills. The Great Depression was a severe blow to the area. Sawmills shut down and there was very little work in the woods. In the late 1930s, just before the Reconstruction Finance Administration was about to auction off the last large mill in the area, the people of St. Maries rallied to help provide the capital to save the mill and re-open it as the St. Maries Lumber Company --- just in time to meet the rising demand of the re-armament time of the late 1930s.
World War II years fueled all-out production and the decade following saw the demand for lumber continuing into the late 1950s. Three recessions in the 1950s put the local economy on a roller-coaster until 1961 when the St. Maries Lumber Company, the largest employer and biggest mill in the area, burned. The people of the area rallied again, forming the Benewah County Development Corporation, which took advantage of federal assistance to get a plywood mill built on the site of the lumber mill. The plywood mill has been expanded several times and came under the ownership of Potlatch Corporation which operates it as part of its St. Maries Complex, which manufactures plywood, dimension lumber and wood chips. During this same period, the development corporation helped finance the beginning of what is now the Rayonier complex in Plummer. In addition to Rayonier, Regulus Stud Mill was opened in St. Maries, thus providing a market and milling for tree sizes which were previously unmarketable.
During all these years, the usual accompaniments of growth appeared --- schools, churches, hospital, tradesmen, skilled and professional people. The beautiful country, recreational opportunities, wildlife and pace of living have attracted an extraordinary number of talented people to the area who prefer and choose to live here.
Sources:
www.stmariesidaho.com/history.htm | gesswhoto.com/idaho/santa.html
