Originally the name was two words, Oro Fino, applied to a gold mining camp established in 1861 two miles (3 km) south of Pierce, that is now a ghost town. When the Nez Perce reservation opened to settlers in 1895, Clifford Fuller set up a trading post on his new homestead and the town (Orofino-on-the-Clearwater) was established the next year. The railroad, later part of the Camas Prairie Railroad, arrived from Lewiston in 1899.
Orofino is home to both the Idaho Correctional Institution - Orofino and Idaho State Hospital North. (The asylum had a huge garden. I don't know if they ever sold anything, but they had a lot more growing than they could use. We would steal huge tomatoes. They didn't taste so good because we didn't have any salt so we took some home.) These two facilities are located adjacent to another Orofino institution: Orofino High School. The mascot for Orofino High School is the Maniac, one of only two "Maniac" mascots in the country. The town hosts the annual Orofino 4 July Celebration as well as the Clearwater County Fair and Lumberjack Days in late summer. Each spring, the annual Boomershoot is held nearby. The boomershoot is held at a large open field. Generally you sign up in small groups and shoot at targets with less than .30 caliber guns.
Geography
Orofino is located at 46°29′8″N 116°15′32″W / 46.48556°N 116.25889°W (46.485485, -116.258847).
Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 3,247 people, 1,137 households, and 767 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,349.0 people per square mile (520.2/km²). There were 1,279 housing units at an average density of 531.4 per square mile (204.9/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 93.93% White, 0.37% African American, 2.13% Native American, 0.59% Asian, 0.09% Pacific Islander, 0.99% from other races, and 1.91% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.25% of the population.
| Historical populations | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Census | Pop. | %± | |
| 1900 | 300 | ||
| 1910 | 384 | 28.0% | |
| 1920 | 537 | 39.8% | |
| 1930 | 1,078 | 100.7% | |
| 1940 | 1,602 | 48.6% | |
| 1950 | 1,656 | 3.4% | |
| 1960 | 2,471 | 49.2% | |
| 1970 | 3,883 | 57.1% | |
| 1980 | 3,711 | −4.4% | |
| 1990 | 2,868 | −22.7% | |
| 2000 | 3,247 | 13.2% | |
| Est. 2007 | 3,073 | −5.4% | |
In the city the population was spread out with 20.1% under the age of 18, 7.9% from 18 to 24, 30.4% from 25 to 44, 26.1% from 45 to 64, and 15.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 132.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 143.2 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $30,580, and the median income for a family was $36,908. Males had a median income of $30,386 versus $20,968 for females. The per capita income for the city was $14,563. About 7.6% of families and 12.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.3% of those under age 18 and 7.1% of those age 65 or over.
Transportation
The city is served by US 12, a two-lane undivided highway on the south bank of the Clearwater River, connected to Orofino by a bridge. The highway connects to Lewiston to the west and Missoula, Montana (over Lolo Pass) to the east. The route is known as the "Northwest Passage Scenic Byway," a National Scenic Byway.
My Home Town in the 1940's and 1950's
I am not sure when we moved to Orofino from the Bitterroot Mountains. I think my parents moved shortly after I was born to Superior, Montana, or Missoula, Montana, and then to Orofino.
We lived in a little house up the hill from downtown. There were only two rooms with no indoor toilet. We rented the house from Bertha Bradshaw. She became our benefactor in many ways. She became both my Aunt and Grandmother. Aside from collecting rent she was a rural mail carrier. She drove her pickup around to out of the way houses/farms to deliver the mail. I rode with her many times. She lived with John Grasser, who became my Grandfather. He had a son who was a giant to me. He was about 6' 6", weighed around 350lbs, and was very strong. John had a farm a few miles from town. They grew just about everything they needed. Lester didn't use a tractor to plow. He used mules to pull the plow, and harvested everything by hand. He also had a wife and a daughter who lived on the farm.
In the next few years I had a brother and two sisters. The house was too small. Bertha had a lot of properties. We moved into a bigger house on Canada Hill, which was an extension of Johnson Avenue (the main street in town.) It had indoor plumbing as well as a toilet. After a year or so we moved again to a bigger house in an alley way behind the bar. I liked living there because I had the attic all to myself. I grew to hate that bar because a lot of Finns went there and played only polkas. I hated polka music after that. That bar was also a hotel, and on every New Year's Eve one of the drunks yelled, "Happy New Year" in slurred language. Canada Hill was a great hill for sledding in the winter. Sometimes we could get up enough speed to go the length of Johnson Avenue (about three blocks.)
We lived in the wrong end of town on the "other side of the tracks" east of Orofino Creek. On our side there were three bars, a whore house, and a livery stable, a tire shop, a Second Hand Store, some ramshackle shacks, duplex apartments, the White Pine Lumber Company, and us. I never saw a "customer" go into the whorehouse. It was called the Rex Rooms and was between the Livery Stable and the People's Bar. I saw one of the girls walk out of the Rex Rooms one day. She was tall and well-built, but her face looked like she had been through several wars. My friends and I would enter the door, ring the bell, and then RUN. We never knew if anyone ever came to the door. Just across the railroad tracks there were two other bars.
To go to school, I had to walk across the Orofino Creek bridge to the train track. and about a quarter of a mile to the Orofino Grade School. Many times there was a train across the road. The engine was a steam engine, and when it was stopped there it let out a lot of steam. It was good to stay away from the steam.
John and Bertha took me camping and fishing trips for up to two weeks at a time from 1948 to 1955. Those were some of the best times of my life. We were far up the North Fork of the Clearwater past the last roads. John and Lester were hunting guides with a camp at Bear Creek, which ran into the North Fork. It was about 20 miles from the end of the road. You had to use mules to pack all your stuff to the camp. They lived at the camp from early September til the end of November. The big game they hunted were bear, elk, and deer, as well as trout in the Bear Creek. One year Lester and I drove a herd of mules on horseback from Orofino to the Bear Creek Camp. it was about a 10 day trip. It was a great trip even though we got saddle sores. Taking cold baths in the various creeks eased the sores.
John had leukemia and these trips were very theraputic. He finally died of the leukemia in 1955. After that Bertha went insane. She married Coleman Meeks who looked exactly as John while wearing John's clothes. I never got to know him, but I didn't like him in John's clothes. The marriage only lasted a few months. She died less than a a year after John died.
We spent a lot of time at the Tunnel Pond. It was a big pond next to a railroad tunnel. The water came from the high water in the Clearwater River. The pond was loaded with catfish and all sorts of pond critters: such as catfish, frogs, toads, lily pads, red-winged blackbirds, meadow larks, cattails, and an occasional beaver. We built rafts out of cast away railroad ties and lumber scraps from the White Pine Lumber Co. The poles were long two by fours. In the spring the pond got to be over 16 feet deep. I never learned how to swim until I went to Oregon State. Knowing how to swim didn't seem to matter. Playing pirates was the big game. I had no fear of falling into the water. I had been fishing and wading in both the Clearwater River and Orofino Creek for years. You have to wade out there to get the big ones.
I had lots of friends on the wrong side of the tracks. My best friend was Joe Simon. His father was Ken Simon who owned the Lumbermen's Hotel and Bar. Joe's mother, Mickey, showed me how to bait a fishhook with worms. The primary job for most of the men on our end of town had something to do with logging. My father spent a lot of time at that bar, as well as the others.
Besides my father there were two others who too often frequented the Lumbermen's Hotel and Bar.
They were named Dirty Shirt John and Salt Pork Johnny. These guys had been in the asylum several times. These guys never made it to Alchoholics Anonymous because AA was an unknown entity at the time in rural North Central Idaho. If you saw them staggering back and forth towards you, you had to watch where you walked lest you be hit by their staggering.
In all the years we lived in Orofino none of my friends drank any alcohol nor smoked any cigarettes. Some of us took beer bottles and pop bottles into the bar at the Lumbermen's Hotel for redemption. I remember a shed we found that had cases of pepsi bottles, so we helped ourselves to lots of them. We got a a penny apiece for beer bottles and 3 cents for a pop bottle.
In 1994 my wife and I stopped in Orofino for one night at the Helgeson Hotel at the other end of Johnson Avenue.We found that the Lumbermen's Hotel and the Livery Stable had burned to the ground. The White Pine Lumber Company and lumber yard was no longer there. In its place was a giant pile of garbage 3/8 mile long and 100 feet high. The whorehouse building was still there, but I imagine that they were out of business by then. The Court House always had a lot of ivy growing on the building. In 1994 it was almost completely covered with ivy. The main businesses on Johnson Avenue were very old, or closed, and a shock to see. There was also a brand new high school. The asylum at the top of one of the hills wasn't there anymore. In it's place was the Idaho Correctional Institution - Orofino and Idaho State Hospital North. I met a man at an AA meeting last year in Sandy, OR who had been an inmate of the Idaho Correctional Institution.
In my case, it's true that you can't go home again.
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