Clearwater Country & Hells Canyon

This is the heart of the Nimiipuu homeland — the Nez Perce, the People — who have lived along the Clearwater, the Salmon and the Snake for more than eleven thousand years. In September 1805 the Lewis and Clark party came down off the Lolo Trail onto the Weippe Prairie half-starved, and the Nimiipuu fed them. A treaty in 1855 guaranteed the people a reservation of some five thousand square miles. Then gold was found at Pierce in 1860, miners poured in, and Lewiston grew up on reservation land as a tent camp at the head of steamboat navigation — and in 1863 became the first capital of Idaho Territory. That same year a new treaty cut the reservation by ninety percent, signed by chiefs who gave away the lands of the bands who had walked out of the council; the Nimiipuu call it the Thief Treaty. In 1877 the bands who never signed were given thirty days to move onto it, and the war that followed opened on June 17 at White Bird Canyon, where the Nimiipuu routed the cavalry sent against them. The Nez Perce Tribe governs its reservation from Lapwai, and Nez Perce National Historical Park keeps sites across the region, among them the Heart of the Monster at Kamiah, where the people's account of their own beginning is set.

US-12 follows the Clearwater upstream toward Lolo Pass, a river road through cedar and basalt with almost nothing on it for the last hundred miles. South, US-95 drops off the Camas Prairie down the White Bird grade to Riggins on the Salmon.

West of Riggins, the Snake runs through Hells Canyon along the Oregon line, the deepest river gorge in North America — 7,993 feet below the summits of the Seven Devils. Few roads reach its floor. From Lewiston, Idaho's only seaport, reached by barges up the dammed Columbia and Snake, jet boats run upriver into it.

What to See in Clearwater Country & Hells Canyon

6 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Natural Areas

DeVoto Memorial Cedar Grove

Lolo Pass

Thousand-year-old cedars on the Lochsa headwaters, where the editor of Lewis and Clark's journals asked to be scattered.

View details →

Heaven's Gate Lookout

Riggins

A staffed fire lookout at 8,429 feet on the rim of North America's deepest river gorge, nearly reachable by car.

View details →

Historic Sites

Spalding

Lapwai

The Nimiipuu went to St. Louis asking about a book. What came back was a mission, a printing press and a museum.

View details →

Weippe Prairie

Weippe

Where the Nimiipuu decided what to do with Clark's starving men, and fed them camas until they were sick.

View details →

White Bird Battlefield

White Bird

Six Nimiipuu men rode out under a white flag. A shot came from the soldiers' side, and the Nez Perce War began.

View details →

Towns & Gateways

Heart of the Monster

Kamiah

Where the Nimiipuu say their story begins: Coyote, a monster, and the heart he tore loose, still on the Clearwater's bank.

View details →

Scenic Drives through Clearwater Country & Hells Canyon

Stories from Clearwater Country & Hells Canyon

Clearwater Country & Hells Canyon rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.