ARROW, Idaho — Two centuries ago, it wasn't uncommon for travelers to stop at the Nez Perce village on the bluff above the Potlatch River.
Among the better-known visitors were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Arrow, near the confluence of the Potlatch and Clearwater rivers about 12 miles northeast of Lewiston, was a peaceful Indian village on May 6, 1806, when the Corps of Discovery camped there on its return trip from the Pacific Ocean. Today the village is gone, and few know of the famous campers who left their mark with the former tribe.
The town off Idaho 3 remains uncluttered, without signs of progress. A one-lane steel bridge spans the mouth of the Potlatch River. It's not unusual to find some fishermen testing the tranquil waters during fishing season.
The corps named the river Colter Creek, but it was later renamed the Potlatch River. John Colter, a member of the corps, is credited with being the first white man to enter what is now Yellowstone National Park, and the geyser basins there were once called Colter's Hell.
The corps camped about a half-mile west of Arrow on the Clearwater River the year before, on its trip to the Pacific. That site was likely near the piles of gravel on the north side of the Clearwater, below the U.S. 12 bridge.
In his journals, Clark wrote about a canoe springing a leak at the spot. The group lost some supplies in the water, and some members who couldn't swim were scared until they realized the river was only waist deep.
When the corps returned on horseback in May 1806, it camped at the village at Arrow. A train depot and railroad junction surrounded by a few homes was built on the spot in the 1890s, but most of the buildings are no longer there.
More recently, the area was used as a dump site. Although there's no marker telling visitors the place was a camp site for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, its place in history was established almost 100 years after the corps arrived.
It was at Arrow that one of the few Jefferson peace medals, given to Indian leaders by the corps, was found wrapped in buffalo skins when the Northern Pacific Railroad was laying tracks for a railroad. It was one of only four of the 32 Jefferson peace medals to be found.
Jim Speer, a seasonal interpretive ranger at the Nez Perce National Historic Park visitor center at Spalding, said Lewis and Clark also distributed more than 50 other medals, many of which bore the likeness of George Washington.
Those medals are not as rare or valuable as the Jefferson medals, he said. The remaining Jefferson peace medals are priceless, Speer said, but if one were sold, it could fetch more than $1 million.
Of the three other peace medals that have been found, one is in the Nez Perce visitor center at Spalding and another is on display at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland.
Arrow was named for the many arrowheads once found in the area, said Mike Venso, a former Lewiston Morning Tribune photographer and a member of the Idaho chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.
"Anyone could just put (their) hand in the sand and pull up arrowheads," Venso said.
But years of scavenging by people looking for artifacts has left little evidence of the Indians who made their home at Arrow. There was an important railroad junction at Arrow in the early 1900s. Venso said the burial grounds and medal were found when the railroad blasted away a part of the hill to put the line down.
The site became a popular fishing, partying and dumping site in the 1950s and 1960s, according to Venso. He helped organize a cleanup of the spot last year.
"We pulled out a refrigerator and all kinds of things," Venso said in a telephone interview from Salt Lake City. "There were a lot of beer cans, but there was a lot of other stuff, too."