SANDPOINT — The moss-covered gravestone of John Thomas Early, who died in 1917 at the age of 29, lies tumbled on its back, pointing due south like some giant, marble compass needle.

Four feet away, a small marker for an infant sits askew. Wind and weather have erased all dates and any hint of a surname. Only the first name “Marie” is still visible, well on its way to being worn smooth by time.

In all directions, headstones pitch and yaw in this grassy sea. Here, Sandpoint, is your early history as a city. It was first buried just before the turn of the 20th century and then dug back up and relocated not long after, when a graveyard along Sand Creek was exhumed to make room for expansion of the Humbird Mill. The remains of those early residents of the original Sandpoint township were moved to a new spot on the north shores on the Pend Oreille River.

The date was 1903, and the place came to be known as Lakeview Cemetery.

“These are the old, old ones,” said Patty McGovern, standing on the southernmost end of the cemetery as she recited the names on large markers by family plots. “Palmer, MacKinnon, Farmin.”

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