1910s map showing the plans for the city’s first sewage system, with a septic tank at Third Street Pier and a dotted line showing pipe laid out to the Pend Oreille River current.

History

Third Street Pier had an ignoble beginning as a wastewater disposal site. Starting in 1912, a pipe inside the concrete structure was used by the city to pump sewage out into the lake. In those early days, two main sewer lines met at the south end of Third Avenue and via a long pipe beginning here, discharged into the Pend Oreille river. In 1958, the site was retired, and the Third Avenue line was rerouted to the new wastewater treatment plant instead. War surplus sewage equipment was used for the new treatment plant on Ella Avenue, turned over for disposal from Farragut’s Navy Station.

In the early 1900s, local toilets were simple outhouses over pits in the ground, with businesses bordering Sand Creek often featuring outhouses on stilts that dropped directly into the creek. Depending on the time of year and weather, the water in Sand Creek might be high enough to wash the waste down into the Pend Oreille River, and when it was not, the smell could be very unpleasant. It was enough of a problem that in 1902, a law was passed prohibiting the neglect of private sewage systems that had become “foul, offensive, or injurious to public health.” Sewage was a major issue in early town meetings, and townspeople clamored for a sewage system, even if it put the town in debt. Their main reasoning involved public health concerns, such as the risk of typhoid and diphtheria. There were numerous recorded cases of typhoid in Sandpoint from raw sewage contamination. 

After years of meetings on the subject, the town came up with a tentative bond to pay for it, and in 1909, Sandpoint got a Cornell University professor of civil and sanitary engineering to lay out plans for the sewage system. Henry C. Ogden came to Sandpoint personally, and concluded that there could be two ways for the sewer to empty into the lake, one directly into Sand Creek, and the other into the current of the Pend Oreille river. He stated that in all probability the Sand Creek outlet could be constructed “considerably cheaper,” but it would only be a question of time before sewage drifted back into the bay and became a menace to the health and sanitation of the city. For this reason, it was decided that the sewer should extend out from Third Avenue, with the caveat that if “at any time in the future it should be found that the pipe did not carry the sewage far enough into the lake to be affected by the current of the river it could be easily lengthened.”

Over subsequent decades, the pollution of the lake with raw sewage became a concern. A more modern treatment plant was constructed in the 1950s.

The pier got a makeover in the early 1990s as a recreation site. Originally, the city had planned for a larger park with boat access, but after a neighbor objected, the project was scaled back to its current size.