Palouse National Forest
The Palouse Forest Reserve and after March 4, 1907, the Palouse National Forest was established by Presidential Proclamation (34 U.S. Statutes at Large 3293) on March 2, 1907 and was one of President Theodore Roosevelt's Midnight forests, created before the federal law banning new forest reserves in six western states, including Idaho, became effective.
The conventional wisdom has the name 'palouse' being derived from the French term for the large treeless plain region in eastern Washington stretching into Idaho: the Palouse, a word meaning grassy spot or place. However, Boone says that the name could originate from the name of a major village of Palouse Indians, Palus, located at the confluence of the Palouse and Snake Rivers. 'Palus' is the Sachapin Indian word for "something sticking down in the water," in this case the something was a large rock, thought to be a beaver's heart, and which had an important religious significance for the Palouse Indians.[1]
The Palouse National Forest had its administrative headquarters in the town of Wallace, Idaho for its 15-month existence and was administered by the
References
- ^ Boone, Lalia Phipps (1988), Idaho Place Names, a Geographical Dictionary, Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press|
- ^ Land Areas of the National Forest System (shtml)
- ^ Davis, Richard C. (September 29, 2005), National Forests of the United States (PDF), The Forest History Society
External links
- Forest History Society
- Listing of the National Forests of the United States and Their Dates (from the Forest History Society website) Text from Davis, Richard C., ed. Encyclopedia of American Forest and Conservation History. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company for the Forest History Society, 1983. Vol. II, pp. 743-788.