Lewiston, Idaho, square honors polio victim who never gave up

Brackenbury Square in Lewiston, Idaho

There are two good ways to travel Highway 12 east through Lewiston, Idaho. The first is to take an immediate right turn after crossing the Blue Bridge from Clarkston, Washington. It loops around under the bridge and you follow the Snake River by the "Wave" canoe statue and by the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers. This is the signed route. It’s more fun to stay on the road that takes you through the tree-lined Main Street of Old Lewiston.

This one-way street will take motorists by Brackenbury Square, named in honor of a Lewiston resident who overcame adversities to thrive in this town. The entrance to this small park is marked by a statue of children playing in a fountain. Take time to enjoy the serenity of this small square; be warned, though, on-street parking sometimes can be difficult to find.

Mary Case Brackenbury grew up in Lewiston’s Hotel Idaho that was owned by her parents. Using the name Launi, she became a professional Polynesian dancer on the vaudeville circuit. In 1953, after dancing at a March of Dimes fundraiser, she was stricken with polio and placed in an iron lung. After a lengthy recovery, she came back to the Hotel Idaho to run the hotel, raise three children and care for her mother. Her husband, Rod Brackenbury, died from wasp stings on a 1957 hunting trip.

When people saw her children taking lessons in international dances, they, too, wanted to learn those dances. Soon he teaches and students were giving costumed presentations throughout the region, with proceeds going to the National Polio Foundation. Mary was named a March of Dimes mother of the year; she died in 1970 from complications of polio.

Lenore, Idaho. tram hauled grain, not people

Spring grain field above Lenore

The awesome scenery along U.S. Highway 12 east of Lewiston through the Clearwater River canyon hides what’s on the other side of the hills: fields of grain, thousands and thousands of acres of a variety of grains.

Getting that grain to market was a challenging task for early farmers, who had to drive wagons full of grain down a long steep hill. That changed in 1898 when the railroad was extended from Lewiston to Lenore, about 25 miles east. A tram was built to carry buckets of grain down 1,600 feet from the prairies above to a new freight stop on the other side of the Clearwater.

The tram system was completed in 1903, with the gravity-activated tram hauling about 100,000 bushels of grain annually until 1938, when a fire destroyed the tram system.