May 30—MURRAY, Idaho — A century ago, there was a dredge floating in Prichard Creek.
It was six stories high, 44 feet wide, 106 feet long. An arm hanging off the back scratched at the earth around the clock for nine years, from 1917 to 1926.
In that time, it turned over 5 miles of the Prichard Creek floodplain. It also left behind lasting damage.
Waste rock moved by the dredge sits in large mounds near Murray, a strange moonscape interspersed with spring -fed ponds. A stretch of Prichard Creek goes dry every year during low water, its flow disappearing underground for about 2 miles. Even the parts of the creek that run year-round have been short on complex fish habitat, with few pools and woodpiles that offer the sort of cover cutthroat trout love.
Creeks all over the West have a similar history, including other tributaries of the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. Here on Prichard Creek, though, conservationists and a timber company are trying to make the most of an opportunity to untangle that legacy.
Trout Unlimited and Idaho Forest Group are leading a long-term project to restore about 10 miles of the creek, where it runs through property owned by the timber company.
They’ve seen progress already from the 2023 addition of dozens of in-stream structures designed to divert flows and improve habitat on the lower 4 miles of the creek.
But fixing the damage done across 10 miles of the stream won’t be easy.
“It’s really hard to repair what millions of years of geology built,” said Erin Plue, Idaho state director for Trout Unlimited. “That sorting of sediments and creating the framework of a channel and a floodplain, it’s really hard to repair.”
Prichard Creek begins near Thompson Pass on the Idaho-Montana border and flows about 14 miles until it meets the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River near the town of Prichard.
It’s one of the North Fork’s most significant tributaries. Mike Thomas, a fisheries biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said it drains an area that’s about a third of the size of the Coeur d’Alene drainage.
In late summer, it provides cold water that helps cool a part of the North Fork that is known to reach water temperatures that are too high for trout.
The creek itself could be a cold-water refuge for North Fork cutthroats in the heat of summer, but Thomas said the fish avoid going into the stream. Trout will congregate at the mouth of Prichard Creek, but few bother to swim up it.
“There’ll be trout in there,” Thomas said. “There’s a lot more trout sitting right at the mouth of Prichard Creek.”
A lack of complex habitat — with hiding cover, holding pools, bends and curves in the stream — is at least partially to blame there. That’s directly tied to long-term human manipulation of the drainage, both from the dredge and other mining practices that date back to the late 1800s.
When Idaho Forest Group purchased about 2,000 acres along the creek in 2014, company representatives saw a stream that was in need of some help.
“We came to the realization of how tore up Prichard Creek really was, and how much nicer it could be if some energy was put into it,” said Alan Harper, the resource manager at Idaho Forest Group.
They explored transferring it to public ownership but ultimately decided to hang onto it and work with Trout Unlimited on the restoration. Last year, the company finalized a conservation easement through the Kaniksu Land Trust that allows daytime public access to the property.
Plue, who worked for Idaho Forest Group before going to Trout Unlimited, said the size of the property — covering about two-thirds of the length of the stream — provides a “super unique” restoration opportunity.
“It’s a once -in -a -lifetime thing,” she said.
The project is broken up into phases. They’re just starting design work on Phase 2, which will tackle the stretch of the stream near the rock mounds.
Phase 1, which cost $1.185 million, was completed in 2023, with funding from the Restoration Partnership, a coalition of state, tribal and federal government agencies that manages funds from mining settlements.
The work focused on the lower 4 miles of the creek. Construction crews built more than 80 structures on the lower end of the creek. Anchored by giant posts stuck into the ground, the structures are essentially wood piles. They’re designed to catch debris and spread water out during runoff.
“What we’re hoping is that the river works with what we’ve given it, and that over time we’ll have some positive impacts,” said Cathy Gidley, TU’s North Idaho program manager.
So far, so good. Plue and Gidley went to Prichard Creek in mid-May to see how the structures were doing after two seasons of runoff. They thought it looked great.
Runoff had been higher this spring than in 2024, and it was clear it had scoured the drainage out and moved a lot of debris downstream.
Twigs and logs were piling up in front of the structures. Fresh sediment deposits were visible on the banks. Pools where cutthroat could hold had formed.
Vegetation they’d planted was still growing, although elk had been browsing it a little bit. On one section, they noticed a few giant beaver lodges and beaver dams.
“This is exactly what we want,” Gidley said.