“Old Priest River Cemetery” is located near Priest River. It is an abandoned cemetery on the bluff north east of the old Louisiana Pacific Mill site. It is situated under the Bonneville Power Company power lines above the gravel pit used by the Bonner County Sheriff’s Department as a firearms range There may be approximately twenty burials there but records are not available. It is believed that the cemetery was above the original town site of Priest River in the late 1800’s. It is also said it may have been a burial site for the local (Kalispell) Indians.
This burial site is located on private property and should not be accessed without prior owner approval. The land is currently owned by Phillip and Texanna Keyser.
Per Marilyn Cork, a local historian of the Priest River area, this Cemetery there are at least five burials that she had been told about. Three are of a family of children that died of an illness. One is a man that was an employee of the USFS. One tombstone is still visible and bore the date of 1904.
Per Mr. and Mrs. Veltri, there were approximately 5 graves at the location. They also advised that to their knowledge no native Americans were buried there. Mrs. Veltri remembered putting flowers on the graves while she was growing up.
A local archeologist visited the site and took pictures of the
remaining stone. The archeologist also noted that the stone was on it’s concrete base. Several depressions in the ground were noted as well as what appeared to be seven to eight bases for tombstones that had fallen or been pushed into a nearby ravine.
The stone from the pictures shows:
Peter Graray Age 46 09-18-1901
An obituary was found in the Kootenai County Republican dated 09-27-1901 saying Peter Gregoire, a West Branch Rancher, was run over and instantly killed by a freight train on the Great Northern bridge a short distance east of Priest River last Friday night. However, it does not give a burial place.
From the Beautiful Bonner Vol I book: 1896 Alice and Bertha Carr died in another diphtheria epidemic. They are buried in the Priest River's original cemetery, which is located on the Keyser property east of town. (Mary L. Will)
Due to the possible desecration of this pioneer cemetery all the information gathered by the archeologist was turned over to the State of Idaho for further action.
I question the find-a-grave burials that were newer than 1903 since this has been private property and the land owners will not acknowledge that there was a cemetery at that location. I sent suggestions for edit on the memorials and deleted them from this list since they are inaccurate.
- Mary Garrison
Submitted & Updated by: Mary Garrison 12-23-2018
10/18/19 Update: Information has been received by Mary Garrison that there are new owners to the property.
See Also: Mary Garrison's earlier info on Internment.net: https://www.interment.net/data/us/id/bonner/settle/oldpriest.htm
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