Dalkena was a lumber town. Like many Pend Oreille County communities, its history is linked to the forest. When timber markets flourished, so did the town; when the industry waned, the town suffered. Over time, the town’s identity diverged from its economic mainstay, but the forest products industry remains a familiar component of the regional landscape.

The Pend Oreille River provided the power and transportation requirements of the original Dalton and Kennedy Milling Company, so named for its founders Henry H. Dalton and Hugh Kennedy. In 1908, the operation combined the names Dalton and Kennedy to become the Dalkena Lumber Company. The town that grew around the operation took the company’s name. The sawmill flourished and quickly became one of the largest in Pend Oreille County. For over three decades—1902 to 1936—the operation prospered and so did the town. In 1916, for example, the Dalkena Lumber Company employed 150 men in its mill with another 375 to 400 workers in the woods. Houses and farms along the adjacent stretch of river diversified the community, as did the addition of Frederick Blackwell’s Idaho & Washington Northern Railroad, which operated a passenger depot and rail freight yard there.

Fire twice decimated Dalkena. In 1910, a massive wildfire, known as the Big Burn, destroyed the town’s sawmill, much of its commercial district, homes, and even a ferry. The community rebuilt, and an even larger sawmill, with an annual operating capacity of 50 million board feet, took the place of the facility lost in the blaze. Then, in 1936, fire erupted again, and the sawmill succumbed to the same fate as it had in 1910. The mill and town never fully recovered.

Although Dalkena today is largely a bedroom community for nearby Newport, one can still see remnants of its sawmilling past, such as a horse barn and a crumbling burner foundation.

Credits and Sources:

Bamonte, Tony, and Susan Schaeffer Bamonte. History of Pend Oreille County. Spokane:

Tornado Publications, 1996.

Chance, David H. The Lumber Industry of Washington’s Pend Oreille Valley, 1888-1941.

Moscow, Idaho: David & Jennifer Chance & Associates, 1991.

“Inland Empire Lumber News.” Mississippi Valley Lumberman 46, no. 49 (1915): 37.

Photographs courtesy of the Pend Oreille County Historical Society and Historical Research Associates, Inc.