Cougar Gulch history series wraps up Sunday at Meadowbrook Hall

A free history session at Meadowbrook Community Hall tied Cougar Gulch’s past to one of the area’s biggest conservation wins, bringing the final installment of the series to 8088 W. Cougar Gulch Road from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday.

The Kootenai County Historic Preservation Commission had promoted the four-part Cougar Gulch series this year, with presentations on Jan. 11 covering 1806-1890, the Missoula Flood, first contacts and migration; Feb. 1 on homesteading and settlement; March 8 on 1900-1940, the community hall and rural schools; and the final April 12 program on 1940-1970, the post-World War II and development era. The structure of the series tracked the way south Kootenai County changed from rural settlement to a faster-growing edge of the county.

Meadowbrook Community Hall gave the program a local setting that matched its subject. The hall began as a schoolhouse, then served as the Farmers Grange until 1973, when it became a community hall for residents of the Cougar Gulch area. Idaho Heritage Trust says the building has also hosted precinct voting, community gatherings, a 4-H group and other functions, making it more than a meeting place and more like a record of how the neighborhood has organized itself over time.

The afternoon also featured Theresa Shaffer, who presented her book, Cougar Bay Nature Preserve: Saving Coeur d’Alene’s Gem. Her account centers on a 1992 proposal by a Hawaiian developer to build a subdivision on Cougar Bay’s northern shore, about two miles south of Coeur d’Alene. That proposal set off a years-long effort that eventually helped create the preserve now there.

That history still matters because Cougar Bay remains one of the few undeveloped areas on Lake Coeur d’Alene. A Bureau of Land Management account says the area now includes hundreds of acres dedicated to wildlife and outdoor enjoyment, and the John C. Pointner Memorial Wildlife Sanctuary trail brochure describes a 1.6-mile trail along Cougar Bay with a viewpoint over the lake and habitat for migratory birds, waterfowl and other wildlife. In 2021, the Bureau of Land Management announced the acquisition of two parcels near Cougar Bay from The Nature Conservancy, saying the purchase secured public access and preserved the area from development.

The Cougar Gulch series, paired with that conservation story, pointed to what south Kootenai County is risking as it grows: not only open land, but the memory of the schoolhouses, granges, precinct halls and shoreline decisions that shaped the place in the first place.