Scattered along the route are farms, usually small; green meadows alternate with dry bunch-grass pastures, fields of grain, and clumps of pines. Low hills partially covered with small second-growth pine and fir still give evidence of the destructive fires that have swept over them, leaving dead snags, blackened stumps and logs, dried-up streams, and eroded hillsides.

This region is marked by the frequent occurrence of granite cliffs and boulders formed during the Mesozoic era, when quantities of liquid granite were forced up and through the earth’s crust. The lava flows of a later date apparently did not extend this far to the northeast. During the glacial ages, the ice sheet ground its way over this region, diverting the river now known as Clark Fork southward along practically the same course as that of the Little Spokane today. Not until the ice cap had retreated far to the north did the river resume its course. The lakes that dot southern Pend Oreille County are products of this glacial action.