NEWSLETTER | WINTER 2022| VOLUME 42 | NUMBER 1
Exterior of the Kootenai County Jail in Rathdrum, circa 1905. Now serves as the Westwood Historical Society. RAT-10-19
Early Jail Escapes of North Idaho Written by Stephen Shepperd If you are old enough to remember how jails on the western frontier were portrayed in the Hollywood movies and television westerns of the mid-20th century, the image in your mind is probably one of a roughhewn-wood or dirtfloored room containing several 10’ x 10’ cells, each cell appearing with narrowly spaced iron bars on three of its sides. On the fourth side, there was nearly always a solid wall with a small window having its own set of steel reinforced bars. True, there may have been some Old West jails that were as elaborate as this in their design, but most lockups of that period were reportedly quite crude. In the warmer climes,
some of them were not even contained inside a building. Prisoners were instead tied out in the open to logs, trees, or even telegraph poles. One old west town sheriff was even said to have used a “pit jail” to contain his prisoners – essentially just a hole dug in the ground beneath the home of the jailer with a trap door for an entrance. The “hoosegows” that existed in the early days of North Idaho were perhaps found somewhere between the two extremes. In the harsh climate of North Idaho, an outdoor jail might have only been an option for a small portion of the year, if at all. By the late 1890s, most communities had established some type of enclosed