Old Mission of the Sacred Heart (sq'wt'u)

Father Antonio Ravalli, an Italian Jesuit, drew the plans in 1850, and Schitsu'umsh builders finished the church about three years later, its walls wattle and daub, raised without a single nail. It is the oldest standing building in Idaho and, by its National Register nomination, the oldest surviving mission church in the Pacific Northwest. Ravalli finished the interior with what he had, including newspapers that came in the mail and tin cans worked into ornament. Every August 15, the Feast of the Assumption, Coeur d'Alene people come back to the church for a pilgrimage and Mass.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cataldo Mission — steps away
  The Schitsu'umsh built it, the 1873 reservation line left it outside, and every August 15 they come back.
• Sunshine Miners Memorial — 15 mi
  A steel miner raises his drill at the mouth of Big Creek, above ninety-one small headstones.
• Pulaski Tunnel Trail — 21 mi
  The mine tunnel where a ranger held his crew at gunpoint while the 1910 fire burned over them.
• Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes — 21 mi
  Seventy-two paved miles laid over a railbed poisoned by a century of ore trains.

More markers nearby

• Mullan Road — 9.6 mi
• Bunker Hill Mine — 10 mi
• Sunshine Mine Disaster — 14 mi
• Coeur d'Alene Lake — 14 mi