A New Look for Black Rock
From the Summer 2026 Issue
Ponderay moves forward with reclaiming its shoreline
Black Rock will be capped with concrete and a protective railing will be added. But the views will still be spectacular. Staff photo.
Ponderay’s shoreline, tucked along the northwest corner of Lake Pend Oreille, is undergoing renovation to make it safer and easier to get to.
This year marks an important milestone for the Front Yard Project, a multi-pronged effort to connect the town’s residents to the shoreline and clean up historic contamination from a 100-year-old lead and silver smelter.
The cleanup and planned railroad underpass to the Bay Trail (shorthand for the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail) along the city’s southern length will provide Ponderay a waterfront park and a non-motorized path connecting it to Sandpoint.
A federal Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Multipurpose cleanup grant will expire at the end of September, so the city of Ponderay and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality are scrambling to meet the deadline. The goal is to remove the gate at the end of the Bay Trail, extend the trail, and make the area safe for recreation.
At first, it won’t be pretty at the northeast end of the trail, because removing lead-contaminated soils will leave a sparse scene where a forest once stood. But the vegetation eventually will grow back, and the views from atop Black Rock—the historic slag pile—will still be spectacular. “It (Black Rock) will look a lot like it does now, but with a railing around it,” said Ponderay Planning Director Kayleigh Miller.
Also, a breakwater will route the trail around the basalt-looking slag heap. That will keep the lake away, wakes from eroding the slag pile, and people also away from still-exposed slag.
IDEQ and the city decided to cap Black Rock with reinforced concrete to keep water from leaching through it and potentially to the lake, which is a source of drinking water for Sandpoint and the surrounding area.
Water samples near Black Rock meet state water quality standards, but the cover will help lock the contaminants in place, according to an IDEQ assessment. The other option was to remove Black Rock.
“From a cost standpoint, it’s not feasible,” said Eric Traynor, program coordinator for IDEQ’s Brownfields and Lands Revitalization program. Besides, he said, the city wanted to keep it.
“It’s an iconic thing for the community,” Miller explained. “To take it out just seems wrong. Instead, we decided to turn it into a feature.”
Black Rock will now be a patio for Ponderay’s Front Yard, furnished with decontaminated relics of the past, like old railroad tracks from the smelter operations. Interpretive signs will be added later to explain the smelter’s history and other stories of Ponderay’s cultural past, including the Kalispel tribe’s legacy.
Tree-lined beaches, along with Black Rock itself, are elements that will become part of the city of Ponderay’s new ‘front door.’ Staff photos
The samples that prompted the environmental cleanup were near the “roasters,” which processed the ore. Some samples found lead concentrations that were 192 times the soil standard for kids’ play spaces.
The plan calls for contaminated soils to be buried under 12 feet of clean soil in a repository adjacent to the railroad, where people frequently trespass to access the lake. The repository design calls for capping with geotextile fabric and clay.
Unfortunately, it will be a while before a legal crossing replaces the illegal paths from decades of foot traffic.
In February, the city applied for a federal grant to construct a pedestrian/bike undercrossing just west of Black Rock. The project is expected to cost $23.5 million, which includes a bike path along U.S. Highway 95. The city’s local option tax will cover another $3 million to develop a park at the entrance to the underpass by the Hoot Owl restaurant.
City residents recently renewed the sales tax for ten years, which is expected to bring in around $30 million for the Front Yard Project, along with street maintenance and the Field of Dreams sports complex. The previous five years of sales tax revenue paid for shoreline property and the first phases of the Field of Dreams. All the waterfront now between Sandpoint and the Ponder Point neighborhood is public, (other than the railroad right-of-way) thanks to the recent land purchases.
Until the underpass is constructed—as soon 2028 or 2029, if the grant is awarded—the only legal and safe access to the shoreline remains the trailhead in Sandpoint, between the Seasons and the city’s water treatment plant.
As a founding member of Friends of the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail, Jan Griffitts has spent nearly two decades promoting public access to Ponderay’s front yard. During that time, she’s learned to be patient—mostly.
“We are grateful to see our vision of public access becoming real,” said Griffitts, president of the nonprofit group. “I can’t wait to walk through that underpass.”
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