Priest Lake, Idaho

The lay of the land

Priest Lake runs north to south for about nineteen miles, tucked into the northwest corner of Idaho where the Panhandle narrows toward Canada. The Selkirk Mountains rise directly off the east shore; the west shore climbs more gently into the Kaniksu portion of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests. Between them the lake is cold, deep and famously clear, fed by snowmelt creeks with names like Kalispell, Lion, Two Mouth and Hunt.

Two things set Priest Lake apart from Idaho's other big lakes. The first is how little of it has been built on. Long stretches of shoreline belong to the Forest Service or the state, and the islands, Kalispell, Bartoo, Eightmile and Fourmile among them, are boat-in camping rather than cabin lots. The second is Upper Priest Lake, a second lake to the north connected by the Thoroughfare, where motors idle down and the forest closes in.

Getting here

Almost everyone arrives from the south. From Spokane or Coeur d'Alene, U.S. 2 runs to the town of Priest River, and Idaho Highway 57 climbs north from there, following the Priest River itself for about 25 miles to the lake. Highway 57 continues up the west shore through Nordman and on toward the Roosevelt Grove of Ancient Cedars. For Coolin and the east shore, turn off 57 at Dickensheet Junction and follow the East Shore Road.

There is no bridge across the lake and no road around it. That is not an inconvenience so much as the point. Plan on cell service being patchy north of Priest River, fuel being available in Coolin and Nordman, and the last big grocery run happening before you leave U.S. 2.

A year on the lake

Summer is short and full. Boats, paddleboards, beaches at Luby Bay, Reeder Bay and Indian Creek, huckleberry picking on the ridges in late July and August, and evenings that stay light until ten. Fall empties the lake out and turns the larch gold. Winter buries the whole basin in snow and hands it over to snowmobilers, skiers and the handful of people who live here year round. Spring is quiet, muddy and mostly for locals.

Priest Lake State Park has three units: Dickensheet on the river south of the lake, Indian Creek on the east shore, and Lionhead at the far north end near the Thoroughfare. The Forest Service runs a string of campgrounds up the west side. Resorts and cabin rentals cluster around Coolin, Luby Bay and Reeder Bay.

People and history

The Kalispel people traveled and camped along the lake long before any map named it. Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet passed through in the 1840s and named the lake after Jan Roothaan, the Superior General of his order; the name that stuck, Priest Lake, comes from the same visit. Trappers, prospectors and loggers followed, then the Forest Service, whose early rangers and the Civilian Conservation Corps built many of the trails and structures still in use.

In the 1920s, silent-film actress and director Nell Shipman ran a film company from Lionhead at the north end of the lake, complete with a menagerie of animals. The Priest Lake Museum, in a 1930s cabin at Luby Bay, keeps that story and many others. Cabins here get handed down rather than sold, and families measure their time on the lake in generations.

Why a cannabis company writes about a lake

Priest Lake Cannabis Company is named for this place because this place is the whole idea. Before Idaho permits any of what our name implies, we want to be useful to the people who love the lake: an honest guide, a careful record of Idaho cannabis policy, and a brand that behaves like a good neighbor. If that day comes, we would rather be known here already than arrive as a stranger.