Taming the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River

I wish I could find a picture.

Drunk underage rafters, drivers, brawlers up the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River.

Their behavior, along with similar behavior from adults who should know better, has forced the Shoshone County sheriff's office into weekend emphasis patrol up the river.

Zero tolerance.

No public intoxication. No glass containers. No driving under the influence. No speeding. No lewdness. No indecent exposure. No fighting.

Sheriff Chuck Reynalds and his deputies are draining law enforcement dollars to tame the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River.

It's always been wild up the North Fork: auto fatalities, drunkenness, underage drinking at the Snake Pit, Albert's Place, and the King's Inn, diving off the silver bridge and the black bridge, keg parties, drugs, on and on. Swimming fatalities, diving injuries, bonfire burns: wild.

If it's always been wild up the river, why the emphasis patrol now?

I mean, take as an example, the Kellogg High School Class of 1972 one-year reunion.

Someday I'll have to have the VHS footage transferred to DVD and YouTube it.

It was a typical Kellogg kegger. Huge cups. Foamy beer. Bonfire. And, an early start. Memory tells me we had that keg tapped about one in the afternoon.

What's more, a person from elsewhere would have thought we all hadn't seen each other for ten years, even though most of us saw each other the week before. Beer. Hugs. Stories about the Univ. of Idaho, NIC, Whitman, the Smelter, the Zinc Plant, the woods: whatever school we were attending. Laughs. Loud, loud laughs.

A couple of hours in, a couple sheriff cars arrived. I'll have to look at the footage again sometime to see if two or three officers came.

The drinking age then was nineteen. Most of us were drinking legally. The underaged kids snuck into the bushes.

The sheriffs barely left their vehicles. They got out, sniffed the air a bit, and enjoyed Vesta and some of the other Pinehurst girls flirting with them.

We were being wild, but the sheriffs weren't out to tame us. I'm not sure what their concern was, but whatever it was, I guess they didn't see it.

They drove off laughing, waving, smiling.

In the Silver Valley, in 1973, law enforcement was much more lax than today. One night, actually in late 1972, a friend and I, only eighteen, had been drinking in Kingston and as we exited the freeway and drove up the off ramp to Kellogg, a city police officer stopped us.

We were drunk. We were in a compact pickup. The back of the pickup was littered with empty Lucky Lager bottles.

The officer asked us if we were on our way home. We told the truth: "Yes."

"OK. Get right home. I don't want to see you on the streets like this."

That was it. No citation, no warning; he just made sure we were going home.

One of my friend's Dad was an Idaho State Police officer. If he pulled over a drunk driver on I-90 and knew who the driver was, his instructions: "Pull over on the shoulder and sleep it off. Then get yourself home."

Those days are gone. More people are on the roads. More people are up the river. Fights, keg parties, drunk drivers, and other law breakers are not as isolated as they once were. More people live up the river. More is at stake.

There are more property owners up the river. More people from out of the area come up the river for recreation. Many must still think it's wild. There's more money up the river.

Wherever there's more money, more land owners, there's more at stake.

The North Fork can't be as wild any more.

It's got to be tamed.