Sandpoint, Idaho: Walking the Line
This article is part nine in a new in-depth series we’re launching on the economic challenges facing resource-based communities, and strategies that can help build lasting prosperity. Read part eight here. Part ten will be released tomorrow.
Moving past a commodity-based economy is not for the faint of heart. Communities must navigate byways laced with potholes and sketchy bridges, their foot consistently applied to the accelerator. Detours and wrecks are par for the course.
It’s a particularly dicey path for isolated regions that have both raw materials, say timber or agriculture, and natural beauty. Look at towns like Driggs, Idaho, which for decades grew seed potatoes, or Bend, Oregon, which once hosted one of the world’s largest sawmills.
Image via Flickr.
When ski areas arrived in both places, they were seen as quaint and gauzy contributions to the community, good for providing seasonal winter work. Until they—and the economy they spawned—took over. Locals resented that. Folks who work in lumber mills or coal mines or tending cattle have a deep bond with their jobs. Recreation economies threaten their identity. Nobody likes that.
Some places, however, not only learned to accommodate commodities and recreation but welcome newcomers with new, OK, maybe even weird, ideas on how to make money.
That’s Sandpoint, Idaho.
The town started out as a lumber factory. In 1900, the St. Paul-based Humbird Lumber bought a local sawmill, modernizing it to a production wonder. Eventually, it would churn out 180,000 board feet of lumber every 24 hours. Much of the raw material came from the 200,000 acres of old-growth timber the mill owned. Other mills arrived then only to fold when prices went south and stayed there. The mighty Humbird liquidated assets in 1931.
Timber still plays a role in Sandpoint and Bonner County. Three sawmills remain in operation, plus new companies, like Lignetics, that use waste products from mills to make items such as wood pellets.
But Sandpoint now has lots of pieces on its economic chessboard. The scenic amenities don’t hurt. The Selkirk and Cabinet Mountains cradle the town. The former made possible Schweitzer Mountain Resort, Idaho’s largest ski area. Yet Sandpoint isn’t a classic ski town like McCall, Idaho, or resort town like Sun Valley. Sandpoint sits on Idaho’s largest lake; Pend Oreille covers 148 square miles and 111 miles of shoreline. This, naturally, attracts a recreation crowd.
It also has homegrown Litehouse Foods, a company with sales that now exceed $300 million. It’s Sandpoint’s largest employer. Sandpoint hosts the French aviation company, Daher. It builds the Kodiak, regarded as one of the most reliable and modern single engine turboprops in the world. The city is headquarters to Kochava, a software company with world-wide sales.
Sandpoint, as viewed from atop Schweitzer. Image via WikiCommons.
Megan Lawson, who leads research efforts at the Bozeman-based Headwaters Economics, has written extensively about Sandpoint and Bonner County. She says they have avoided a binary, black and white stance to economic shifts. “It doesn’t have to be this unilateral approach, commodities versus recreational economies,” says Lawson, who works with the Bozeman-based Headwaters Economics. “The community saw you could have timber side-by-side with a ski area.”
Bonner County has a high percentage of sole proprietorship. Lawson calls Sandpoint’s entrepreneurial culture the region’s secret sauce. And how does one build that?
“That’s not easy to explain,” she says. “There’s hardship. Lots of folks are forced to do different things; that gives them a license to innovate. Then there’s isolation. You figure stuff out on your own.”
Jeremy Grimm is a former planning director for Sandpoint. He now runs Whiskey Rock Consulting. “There was a desperation in this town when timber and logging fell on hard times in the early 80s. We had unemployment in excess of 15%. But a group of people got together to create a different story for the town. It’s theme: ‘We mean business, but bring your toys.’”
Unlike other towns exploring change but still wary of outsiders and their ideas, Grimm said Sandpoint welcomed operations far from the commodity galaxy. That included Dennis and Ann Pence, who, in 1984, relocated from New York City. Using $40,000 in savings, they started Coldwater Creek, a woman’s clothing retailer that eventually racked up over $1 billion in sales.
The feckless gods of retail eventually forced Coldwater Creek into bankruptcy. Sandpoint shuddered but recovered. Stories abound of how former Coldwater Creek employees began their own innovative ventures, from mobile florists to adventure consultants.
Key to Sandpoint’s success, says Grimm, is what he calls cross-pollination. He points to the creation of XCraft, a manufacturer of powerful, long-range drones born in Sandpoint. The principals are Charles Manning, founder and CEO of software company Kochava, and JD Claridge, an aerospace engineer with passion for every aspect of flying.
Cross-pollination is made possible, in part, because Bonner County has become a cluster innovation center for the aerospace industry. There’s not only Dahler and Tamarack Aerospace but Timberline, which supplies emergency and utility helicopters to governments and companies around the world. There’s even a SpaceX station outside Sandpoint. This development actually has more to do with Starlink, a satellite internet constellation company in progress, courtesy of Elon Musk. It promises to deliver high-speed broadband internet to even the remotest places.
Grimm noted that the city of Sandpoint and Bonner County teamed up with Ting fiber internet to provide high-speed service.
A historic high school building in Sandpoint. Image via WikiCommons.
To support such an economy, Sandpoint recognized it must pay attention to the basics. In 1992, frustrated by low support for public schools, a group of citizens formed the Panhandle Alliance for Education or PAFE.
“We started seeing the problems associated with the low number of our high school graduates going on to get a higher degree. It was about 45%. That was scary,” said Dave Slaughter, a retired board member of PAFE. “We got a new school board and started recruiting from the outside for administration. We got a series of benefactors and now we have an endowment of over $4 million. There’s not a school in our district that hasn’t received grants to support teachers and programs. We get measurable results. Our motto is: In grades 1-3 you learn to read. After that, you read to learn.”
The transition away from commodities may have started by the very nature of the beast. From 1940 to 1970, despite a lumber boom created by WWII and post-war housing shortage, Bonner County’s population remained flat. Mills got ruthlessly efficient. People left and a different kind of citizens arrived. Roughly 82% of the residents in Bonner County were not born in Idaho.
In the end, that dangerous road leading away from commodity domination can be navigated by what we might call pluralistic job identity. There’s a place for everyone.
Samuel Western has served in the Swedish Merchant Marine, worked as a commercial fisherman, a longshoreman, logger, and a hunting guide. He has published in the Economist, LIFE, and Sports Illustrated. A two-time recipient of the Wyoming Literary Fellowship for fiction, he is also a finalist for the High Plains Books Award for poetry. He lives in Sheridan, Wyoming.
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