Sandpoint exists because trains needed to cross Lake Pend Oreille. In 1882 and 1883, the Northern Pacific Railroad built a timber trestle across the lake's shallows and mudflats to meet a congressional deadline for the railroad's land grant — and a town grew around the crossing.
Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln, reporting to Congress, declared the lake crossing "the most difficult portion of the whole line to construct." Builders cut trees along the route to lay track, and, as the report put it, might as well put the timber to good use — so the bridge went up in wood, most of it spanning seasonal mudflats and the "sandy point" that gave the town its name.
The town followed the rails. The settlement was first called Pend d'Oreille and predated the railroad by only a couple of years; pioneer Robert Weeks opened a general store beside Sand Creek in 1880 after reading a railroad survey that marked the spot as promising. The rough construction camp of Venton, on the lake's south end, faded as Sandpoint grew around the rail crossing.
The original wooden bridge nearly floated away in the flood of 1894. Workers loaded flatcars with rock and parked them on the bridge to hold it down until the waters receded. The scare prompted the railroad to build a replacement six feet higher: 83 cement piers, steel spans, and a swing span to let steamboats pass. The 1904 bridge was the talk of the town and gave the local economy a boost.
The old wooden pilings from that first bridge still rest underwater, snagging the lures of anglers who fish above them. And the crossing remains a working artery: the 1904 bridge still carries freight and passenger trains, and in 2022 BNSF opened a second bridge beside it — 4,873 feet of concrete and steel, 49 spans, built to untangle one of the busiest rail bottlenecks in the Northwest.