Princeton, Idaho — Academic Name in Timber Country

Princeton, Idaho, sounds like a place where someone ought to be assigning reading. Its history is considerably more interested in timber.

The community occupies Potlatch River country northeast of Moscow, where logging and rail transportation once moved forest products out of surrounding hills and carried workers and supplies in.

As logging required fewer people and roads made larger towns easier to reach, Princeton's commercial footprint contracted. Homes, forest and small farms remained.

The nearby Moscow-Pullman university economy now influences the region more than it once did, giving the old academic name an accidental modern relevance. Princeton never became a college town. The colleges simply grew closer.