Onaway, Idaho — Independent City Beside Potlatch

Onaway sits immediately beside Potlatch, close enough that a traveler can cross between them without sensing how much municipal history separates the two.

Potlatch was built as a company town around an enormous white-pine sawmill. Onaway developed alongside the same timber economy while retaining its own incorporated government.

Workers, rail infrastructure and services tied the neighboring communities together, and the closure of the original mill changed both. Yet Onaway's separate civic identity remained intact.

That independence is the interesting part. A compact collection of streets beside a larger neighbor has continued to operate as its own Idaho city long after the company-town economy that linked them was transformed.