Throughout her lengthy career as a historian, Marylyn Cork captured the stories and photographs of the people and places surrounding Priest River.

Now, a collection of photos amassed by Cork and others is being made available to the public through a collaboration between the Priest River Library, Cork and the University of Idaho.

After decades of collecting the photos — now estimated at more than 1,800 — the collection has been turned over to the community via the Priest River Library.

The Priest River Library, in conjunction with Cork and the University of Idaho Special Collections and Archives, is launching the Marylyn Cork Priest River Historical Collection this week. Several years in the making, program director Christa Shanaman said the collection is going live to the public the first week of October.

The first 600 photographs have been digitized and accessioned into the university's Special Collections platform to make the historic photographs accessible to the public online.

Born in Montana, Cork grew up in the Sagle area, where her father operated a sawmill and ran the family farm. After her marriage, she moved to Priest River in October 1955 with her husband, who worked at the Diamond Match Co. After his death following 40 years of marriage, Cork went to work at the Priest River Times, where she put her love of history and talent for writing to work, sharing the stories of the community she now called home.

It was no wonder, then, that when Roger Gregory was looking for someone to take over a collection of photos he'd begun acquiring to preserve and share the community’s rich history as a timber town, he turned to Cork.

Gregory had received a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council in the 1980s to begin collecting photos. Among the first to donate was Chuck Peterson of Hope, a former U.S. Forest Service employee who had collected a large number of historical photos of Bonner County, including Priest River and Priest Lake.

To help with the effort — both to collect photos and capture the stories they conveyed — Gregory asked two community residents to assist. When they proved to be too busy, Gregory turned to Cork.

She was delighted.

Soon, he turned everything over to the longtime historian — from collecting the photos to ownership. Cork and friends of the historian continued their work, long planning to turn the collection over to the Priest River Museum at some point, according to University of Idaho officials.

However, because the museum doesn't have the ability to store, display or protect the images at this time, Cork decided to turn them over to the community via the library in 2024.

The library received a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council in 2024 to digitize the photos, which can be accessed through the University of Idaho Digital Collections.

Shanaman and several library volunteers have spent the past year scanning and processing the collection’s photos. Once that process is complete, the physical collection will be cataloged and archived through the Priest River Library.

“Priest River was a wide-open, proud timber town for more than half a century, its economy based on the wealth pouring out of the Selkirk Mountains in the form of giant white pine trees, ponderosa pine, larch, Douglas fir and other softwood species foresting the area,” Shanaman said on the collection’s website.

“A yearly spring log drive down the 67-mile wild and turbulent river drew thousands of visitors and even international attention to the town.”

Thousands of board feet of timber made its way to sawmills in Bonner County and Pend Oreille County, Washington. During its peak, the area featured more than a half-dozen sawmills where a majority of the community’s workers were employed. However, downturns in the timber industry resulted in massive unemployment, and many of the mills closed permanently.

“The town faltered for a time, and a couple of decades passed before a sense of renewal and revival began truly to build,” Shanaman  said.

For more information or to view the collection, go to lib.uidaho.edu/digital/priestriver.

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