Statehood Day is rarely celebrated in Idaho, since the Fourth of July is the next day, but we have recognized the two together twice in our history. The first, of course, was July 3 and 4, 1890. The grandest parade Boise had ever seen featured 500 people marching as more than a thousand cheered.

By the turn of the century, the little town of Harrison (founded 1891), was a bustling timber town of 2000 people and 11 lumber mills. And just about the same time of the end of Spanish rule in Cuba, Queens and Staten Island merge with New York City.  The first known use of the word "automobile", in an editorial in the New York Times. The City of Harrison Idaho becomes incorporated.

Early Harrison was the busy steamboat trade. Until the 1920's, Lake Coeur d'Alene boasted the most extensive lake steamboat system west of the Great Lakes. With the coming of the railroad, steamboats were no longer economically viable. Eventually most of the big boats were burned and scuttled.

Now with fewer trees being harvested and increased efficiency in the timber industry meant a gradually decreasing population for Harrison, which now stands at about 294 residents.  This isolated town used to be a literal backwater on the shore of spectacular Lake Coeur d'Alene.  But the opening of a paved, 72-mile trail that runs from the Rocky

Mountain town of Mullan down to Plummer, Idaho, has the world biking and hiking through Harrison. The Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes is providing the type of new economic spark that many decayed Western towns only dream about.  The trail began as the Union Pacific Railroad, laid in 1888 to service the mining and timber industries.

By the time trains stopped rolling through in 1991, the planning of the trail had begun emerging.  The work cost the railroad more than $48 million, and the outdoor public is the big winner. The eastern terminus is in Mullan, which is near Lookout Pass on the Idaho-Montana border.  The trail runs along the Coeur d'Alene River through the Silver Valley towns of Wallace and Kellogg, past the Cataldo Mission state park and then along a chain of small lakes before the river flows into the lake at Harrison. From there, the trail cuts south along the lake shore for six miles, crosses the rebuilt Chatcolet Bridge railroad span across the lake and moves into the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation before ending at Plummer. The Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes is the latest addition to an area that has

become a magnet for people seeking family-friendly outdoor activities.

But Harrison is the place most transformed by a trail. The town of 260 people for decades has been little more than a pit stop for boaters seeking gas, a bathroom and something to drink. It is 30 miles south of Interstate 90. The short main street was largely vacant,and lake view homes could be bought for $50,000 But not any longer since early 2004 Home sales have been registering in the range of $100,000 to as much as $1.2 Million for lake front acreage.