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Pierce / Weippe

Pierce / Weippe

Pierce, Idaho
Location: 38 miles East of Orofino on Hwy 11 or 75 miles East of Lewiston

Weippe, Idaho
Location: 26 miles East of Orofino on Hwy 11 or 69 miles East of Lewiston

Region: Clearwater Region in North Central Idaho
County: Clearwater

The Pierce-Weippe Chamber of Commerce in North Central Idaho invites you to experience all that our area has to offer. The journey along Idaho's Highway 11 Gold Rush Historic Byway takes you from the crossing of the Clearwater River at Highway 12 in Greer, through the rolling wheat fields and camas prairies of Fraser and Weippe, into the wooded Gateway to the Clearwater National Forest Backcountry of Pierce.

The scenery is breathtaking, with numerous hills, mountains, forests, valleys and rivers to delight any photographer. There are plenty of historic sites to experience, including the site where the starving Lewis and Clark Corp of Discovery met the Nez Perce Indians on the Camas prairie after crossing the Bitterroot Mountains. In addition, 10 miles north, you can visit the oldest town in Idaho - Pierce, a gold rush town which is home to the oldest courthouse in the state. For the outdoor enthusiasts, the area offers everything you could desire: big game hunting, fishing, hiking, ATV trails, downhill and cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, and camping.

Weippe
In earlier days the Weippe area was frequented by the Nez Perce Indians, who enjoyed the summer climate and profitable hunting grounds. They erected lodges, fished, hunted and dug the camas root in the surrounding area. In 1805, Lewis and Clark had their first encounter with the Nez Perce Indians on the Weippe Prairie, not far from the present townsite.

The word Weippe was originally spelled “Oy-ipe” by General Oliver Otis Howard, in his journals during the campaign against the Nez Perce and negotiations with Chief Joseph in 1877. Other spellings included Oy-iap and Wyap-p. Harry Wheeler, Nez Perce historian, believed that Weippe means a "very old place," "oy" means "all" in the Nez Perce language, but no meaning has been found for "iap". The Nez Perce also say it may have something to do with a spring of water or camas ground. The meaning of the name is still greatly debated.

The Homestead Act brought many families to the region and the area grew and thrived. Weippe was incorporated in December of 1964 and is located on the Gold Rush Historic Byway, Idaho Highway 11. The Weippe Prairie is one of eight registered national landmarks in the State of Idaho and is part of the National Lewis & Clark Historic Trail. It is a level meadow fringed by forest, and through it runs Jim Ford’s Creek, named after a pioneer wood dealer from Lewiston.

Pierce
Soon after the Corps of Discovery’s expedition through the region, the fur trading industry came to Idaho. Then, in 1860, a party of gold seekers, led by Captain E. D. Pierce and a halfdozen others, was led by Jane, the daughter of Chief Timothy, through nearby mountains to Canal Creek. One of the party, Wilbur Bassett is credited with discovering the golden grains in the creek bed. The resulting rush, estimated at as many as 6,000 men, among them many Chinese, was reduced years later by another strike elsewhere. At that time, Pierce was actually located in what was then the Washington Territory. In 1861, Pierce became the first established town in Idaho, and the county seat of Shoshone County. In 1862, the county built a courthouse which was Idaho's first government building. The Idaho Territory was established in 1863 and the Pierce remained the Shoshone County Seat until 1885 when the county seat was moved to Murray. The courthouse still stands today, behind the J. Howard Bradbury Logging Museum.

In the 1890's, a father and son, C.D. and Nat Brown, came West seeking new areas of timber and found the "green gold" they sought in the largest stand of white pine and other coniferous types in north Idaho's Clearwater and Benewah counties and nearby hills. Word spread to their former workers in the timber depleted Great Lakes region, and many came out to establish homesteads which opened the land for lumbermen. In 1925 a railroad was built to facilitate hauling the harvest to mills, large and small, nearby. The logging industry is still a large part of the local economy.

Community Links:

• Weippe Discovery Center

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