The wages of greed:
During Coeur d’Alene’s wild-west years in the late 1800s, Tony Tubbs, a German immigrant, had his own get-rich-quick scheme. He bought a 138-acre hill alongside Lake Coeur d’Alene for a modest price and attempted to sell lots, making the land appear flat on his not-drawn-to-scale map. In reality, the hill slopes quite steeply into the lake. His scheme failed, and the hill remained undeveloped. In an ironic historical footnote, Tubbs’s greed may have helped preserve a jewel of urban wilderness known as Tubbs Hill.
An overview:
Tubbs Hill from Corbin Point
From an aerial view above the lake, Tubbs Hill looks like a giant mud pie of more-or-less circular boundaries and a narrow spillover on one corner, with evergreen trees sticking up everywhere. Elevation at the summit is 2,533 feet. Some two-thirds of the hill extends into the lake while the rest connects to McEuen Park and downtown Coeur d’Alene. The park and the hill, both maintained by the City Parks Department, greatly enhance the city’s recreational offerings.
Structures:
Although Tony Tubbs failed as a developer, two structures were once found on the hill. Austin Corbin, son of a pioneer entrepreneur in town, bought property next to a spit of land extending from the hill and built a home in 1906. Ten years later, he sold the home and thirty years later all that remained were the ruins of a fireplace, but the spit of land became known as Corbin Point. Around the same time Corbin built the home, a large grandstand was constructed nearby for the townspeople to view boat races and, later, to watch old steamboats end up as funeral pyres. The grandstand no longer exists.
The trail:
Corbin Point
A two-mile trail loops around the coastline of Tubbs Hill, with an alternate trail across the hill to the summit. Shortly after arriving in Spokane, I heard about the trail and the beautiful lakeside views, and one drizzly spring day decided to check it out. Two or three fellow hikers were also out. The trail winds around boulders and occasional trees, with views west on the wide northern extension of the lake, looking toward the Coeur d’Alene Resort, the City Swimming Beach, and, closer, old pilings remaining from the lumber days. At Corbin Point, side trails lead down to several small beaches bordering the spit that fans out to large boulders in the water. I vowed I would return to swim one day. The trail continues, some twenty feet above the water. It opens onto northeastern views of the lake, including mansion homes set back from Sherman Beach and, in the distance, the floating green of the Coeur d’Alene Golf Course. At this point, the trail heads inland, through thicker forest and a variety of shrubs.
The second time I visited the hill, I came prepared with a brochure put out by the Tubbs Hill Foundation, which supplied me with much of the information used in this post. The third time, one June, a friend from southern California and I sported bathing suits under our clothes, determined to take a swim at a Corbin Point beach. It turned out to be a forced dip into ice-cold water. This led to a debate on which was colder – Lake Coeur d’Alene or the Pacific Ocean. My friend got out her smart-phone: the water was officially 59 degrees. Two months later, I returned for a much more pleasant swim.
Rocks off Corbin Point
Next time, I’ll visit in winter, perhaps when the resort is awash in Christmas lights – but that will be another post.