Headquarters, Idaho — Town With a Job Title

Headquarters was built to manage timber, and nobody wasted much imagination disguising that fact in the name.

Potlatch Lumber Company operations needed a permanent base deep in Clearwater County forest for workers, administration, equipment and the logistics of harvesting enormous stretches of timber.

Company houses and services followed.

The settlement was not beside the forest industry. It was part of the machinery of the forest industry.

Changes in logging, transportation and corporate organization eventually reduced the need for a large isolated company town, but Headquarters remained inhabited.

Its location still feels purposeful. You drive deep into the trees to reach a place called Headquarters because, once upon a time, that was literally where the work was run from.