About

Lake Pend Oreille in northern Idaho

Updated December 12, 2025

Greeting:
My name is Julie Monroe, and I live in the place of my birth: Sandpoint, Bonner County, Idaho, within the aboriginal territory of the Qlispe People. I am a 71-year-old white Catholic woman who is delighted (and grateful) to have the time and means to usher readers to the history of my home place, the state of Idaho, and the Inland Northwest. The purpose of this blog is to offer local examples of significant national historical trends and ideas. 

Table of Contents:
  • Frances Sleep profiles a 20th century Sandpoint woman who served as Bonner County Probate and Juvenile Judge from 1957 to 1970.
  • Grace Period is a history of the advent of Christianity in what is now Bonner County, Idaho

  • Ignatz Weil profiles a forgotten early Bonner County booster


My Credentials:
After earning a bachelor's degree in History in the 1970s from the University of Idaho in Moscow, I worked as an administrative assistant in the public sector until the 1990s when I began working independently as a historian, writer, editor, and print publication manager. While also working part-time as a library assistant, I authored three books published by Arcadia Publishing about the history of Latah County, Idaho; coordinated special projects during the state of Idaho's commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial; and managed production of the University of Idaho College of Law annual report. In 2007, I began working as a research assistant in the University of Idaho Library's Special Collections and Archives, and in 2008, I received the Idaho State Historical Society's Esto Perpetua award for outstanding contributions to Idaho history. I retired and returned to Bonner County in 2014.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Frances Sleep: Chair and Advisor, 1966 through 1968

Image
  Sandpoint News-Bulletin , November 10, 1966 About Frances Sleep Meeting Chair In mid-November 1966, just days after being re-elected Bonner County’s Probate Judge in the general election, Judge Sleep presided over the annual meeting of the Idaho Conference of Social Welfare in Boise. If accounts of the proceedings in the Idaho Statesman are accurate, Conference President Sleep oversaw a rancorous meeting. First, Idaho Governor Robert E. Smylie insulted a group of Idaho housewives, and then the conferees nearly censured the Idaho Department of Public Assistance and its director.   An account of the Smiley insult incident is in an article in the November 18 edition of the Idaho Statesman . Unfortunately, it so confusing that an exact sequence of events is difficult to determine. The Idaho Conference on Social Welfare, it seems, had invited the governor to speak at its annual meeting – something he had done in the past. In 1966, however, Smylie was unable to appear in-pers...
Read more

Frances Sleep: President-Developer-Commissioner, 1961

Image
Idaho Statesman , January 1961 About Frances Sleep     President, Idaho Press Women According to an article in the Saturday, January 21, 1961, edition of the Idaho Statesman , Judge Sleep had recently arrived in Boise to preside as president at the annual meeting and luncheon of the Idaho Press Women . Before the women got down to business, however, they enjoyed a luncheon at which Betty Penson, the “Statesman’s woman’s editor,” and former Idaho governor C.A. Bottolfsen, spoke. Penson discussed her experiences on a recent trip to Africa, and Bottolfsen – with Idaho’s territorial centennial only two years away – challenged those present to do more to publicize Idaho’s “rich treasury of history.”” ( Idaho Statesman , January 23, 1961, p. 9) Flag-raising ceremony, Camp Pioneer, Priest Lake, July 1961 Idaho Youth Conservation Corps “Developer” In mid-February, a n article in the February 12 edition of the  Idaho Statesman  reports that , a bill "setting up a pilot ...
Read more

My Company Tis of Thee

Image
Update :  Court OK's Hudson's Bay selling trademarks, like iconic stripes, to Canadian Tire , CBC , June 3, 2025 While the Thirteen American Colonies gained their independence from Great Britain in 1776, another English colony in North America could not claim the same until 1846. Located in the upper northwestern corner of North America, the British originally called the colony the Columbia District , and later, the Columbia Department. When the geopolitical ambitions of the young United States stirred at the turn of the 19 th century, its citizens not only claimed the colony as its own but also renamed it. Nineteenth century Americans called the region, the Oregon Country . Relying on diplomacy, it took the United States and Great Britain nearly 40 years to resolve their conflicting claims on the territory. The first formal agreement between the two nations came in 1818 when they agreed to occupy the region jointly. At that time, however, neither the U.S. nor Great Britain wa...
Read more