Kootenai, ID

Kootenai is a Bonner County city in Idaho's Panhandle, a few miles north of Sandpoint and close to Lake Pend Oreille. The 2020 census counted 941 residents. The town grew around lumber, lake shipping, and the Northern Pacific Railroad: the Kootenai Timber Company laid out 80-foot streets and reserved lots for a school, park, and church as the mill town took shape. Kootenai incorporated as a village in 1910 and became a city in 1967, but its timber-and-rail frame is still the useful way to place it.

Lake Pend Oreille and the Pend Oreille River shape the wider Bonner County map, while Sandpoint carries county services, a hospital, airport, and library. Kootenai's own center shrank after the Kootenai mill closed in 1931, but the old street plan and city park still show how the town was designed for workers and their households. Kootenai's local scoop is a former lumber town that became a small lake-country city, with rail, forest, and water still sharing the same short map.