Whitehouse Pond

The guide the captains called Toby was a Shoshone; a trader who lived among his people in the 1870s gave his own name as Pikee Queenah, Swooping Eagle, and explained "Toby" as a short form of a Shoshone phrase that joked about his furnishing white men with brains. His detour to the Lochsa cost the Corps a hard climb through early snow up what is now Wendover Ridge. The pond's name is much newer: Private Joseph Whitehouse noted passing a pond in his journal, and a Forest Service historian of the Clearwater suggested naming it for him.

What the plaque says

Whitehouse Pond On their westbound journey, Lewis and Clark crossed here, September 15, 1805 after camping 4 miles upstream at Powell. Their Shoshoni guide had brought them down an old trail from Lolo Pass to a Lochsa fishery he knew about. To continue west, he had to take them north up this ridge to rejoin their Lolo Trail route. Indian travel through here had to go along high ridges because Lochsa Canyon had too many cliffs and gorges to provide a good horseback route. 333 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• DeVoto Memorial Cedar Grove — 5.4 mi
  Thousand-year-old cedars on the Lochsa headwaters, where the editor of Lewis and Clark's journals asked to be scattered.

More markers nearby

• Lolo Trail Crossing — 10 mi
• Lolo Summit — 13 mi