forward

Flooded Farms

"All of those were homesteads along the river, the most prized homesteads.  The first people came in and homesteaded along the river to get those beautiful meadows.  So when Albeni Falls flooded all those meadows, they flooded out the original homesteaders .. . . And of course there was a lot of opposition.. . . They couldn't believe that the government could do this to them.   But they did.  They took their land.  And they weren't paid well either."

Virginia Overland, resident of Sagle, Idaho, interviewed by Nancy Renk in 1996.
Excerpts of Virginia Overland's interview.

Before and after pictures of Morton's Slough, flooded by Albeni dam. 
courtesy of Virginia Overland.

    As construction proceeded at Albeni Falls, appraisers worked upstream to settle with landowners whose property would be flooded by the dam.  Government surveys showed that nearly 6,300 acres would be permanently submerged, most of them privately owned farms along the river and northern edge of Lake Pend Oreille.  In 1943, several groups including local women's clubs urged Congress to defeat the plans for Albeni Dam in large part because of the resultant flooding.  When it was clear that dam building would proceed despite these efforts, land owners understandably wanted what they considered a fair price for their lands and the editor of the Sandpoint Bulletin urged them to band together to demand it.    

• Letter sent to Magnus Overland, Virginia Overland's father-in-law, by
  the Army Corps regarding his land in the Morton area

• Farming the Pend Oreille