Coeur d'Alene: The City by the Lake

The name Coeur d'Alene, like several other names for Idaho towns and monuments, comes from the French, but its meaning is sometimes disputed. Coeur d'Alene literally means, "heart of the awl," in which, "awl," is taken to mean, "shrewd," but others argue that the name was originally Coeur de Leon ("Heart of the Lion") but has since been anglicized and corrupted.

In any case, the name was first bestowed by French-Canadian trappers to the local Indian tribe, allegedly to characterize their strict trading practices. In the 1870's, when General William Tecumseh Sherman came through, he oversaw the building of a fort on the lake which he named Fort Coeur d'Alene (later renamed in his honor), which inspired the name of the town which grew up around it. Local residents sometimes refer to it as, "Lake City," or even by its initials, "CdA."

Coeur d'Alene is the county seat of Kootenai County in the Idaho panhandle. It is a small town of around 50,000 according to an estimate made in 2006. The city itself is surrounded Coeur d'Alene National Forest, Lake Coeur d'Alene (as well as other smaller lakes amidst the forested areas), and foothills. Its closest urban center is Spokane, Washington, about thirty miles from the town.

Coeur d'Alene is not far from two major ski resorts of the area: there is Silver Mountain in nearby Kellogg and Schweitzer Mountain, just north in the town of Sandpoint, so this occupies residents and visitors for the long winter which has an average snowfall of forty-nine inches in a year.

The surrounding forest hosts numerous campgrounds, and since the average summer temperature is less than 83 degrees Fahrenheit, camping and lake-related sports are common from May to September, the only frost-free months.

Coeur d'Alene has also become a destination for golf-lovers, as the Coeur d'Alene Resort Golf Course has been noted for some of its unique challenges. For example, the fourteenth hole is known for being the only floating, movable green in the world.

Each year in June, the town also features an event called, "Car d'Alene," which is a combination of a car show and a beauty pageant: the finest cars and the most attractive women, young and old, emerge to be displayed.

The city's Christmas Lighting Ceremony was showcased on Good Morning America not long ago, as it was one of the largest such displays in the nation.

Coeur d'Alene is, ultimately, a town with a rich history and a number of distinguishing features which set it apart from other similar settlements.

To learn more about how to get, "a little slice of heaven," as Barbara Walters named Coeur d'Alene, be sure to visit Associated Brokers (http://www.associatedbrokersnw.com/), the, "go to," people in Coeur d'Alene real estate. Art Gib is a freelance writer.