Lake Pend Oreille
Lake in Kootenai and Bonner counties in Idaho, United States
Lake Pend Oreille in the northern Idaho Panhandle is the largest lake in the U.S. state of Idaho and the 40th-largest lake by area in the United States, with a surface area of 148 square miles (380 km2). It is 69 kilometres (43 mi) long, and 1,152 feet (351 m) deep in some regions, making it the fifth-deepest in the nation and having a volume of 43,939,940 acre feet = 54 km3. The lake is fed by the Clark Fork River and the Pack River, and drains into the Pend Oreille River, as well as subsurfacely into the Spokane Valley–Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer.
It is surrounded by national forests and a few small towns, with the largest population on the lake at Sandpoint. The majority of the shoreline is non-populated and all but the southern tip of the lake is in Bonner County. The southern tip is in Kootenai County and is home to Farragut State Park, formerly the Farragut Naval Training Station during World War II, of which a small part is still active and conducts U.S. Navy acoustic underwater submarine research.
The public source identifies “Lake Pend Oreille” as lake in Kootenai and Bonner counties in Idaho, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lake, Pend and Oreille.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Lake Pend Oreille”, the useful work is to connect “lake in Kootenai and Bonner counties in Idaho, United States” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Lake Pend Oreille”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Lake Pend Oreille primary sources, Lake Pend Oreille archive and Lake research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Lake Pend Oreille” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.