Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Bonners Ferry, ID

Bonners Ferry is the largest city in and the county seat of Boundary County, Idaho, in the state's northernmost county.

The city's population was 2,520 at the 2020 census, nearly unchanged from 2,543 in 2010, and it counted 1,088 households and 1,188 housing units in 2020.

The median age in Bonners Ferry was 47.6 years in 2020, and about 26.5 percent of residents were 65 years of age or older.

Bonners Ferry sits on the south bank of the Kootenai River about 27 miles south of the Canada-United States border, and it is in the Pacific time zone.

When gold was discovered in the East Kootenays of British Columbia in 1863, prospectors surged north over the Wildhorse Trail, and Edwin Bonner, a merchant from Walla Walla, Washington, established a ferry in 1864 where the trail crossed the broad Kootenai River.

The village of Bonners Ferry was formally established in 1893, and the Great Northern Railway reached the town in 1892, followed by the Spokane International and Kootenai Valley lines.

The rich Kootenai Valley became known as the 'Nile of the North,' and the Bonners Ferry Lumber Company grew to be one of the world's largest lumber mills.

Completion of Libby Dam in 1975 lessened the threat of serious spring flooding that had once left Bonners Ferry perched on stilts, and much of Main Street dates from the brick-building era that followed.

On September 20, 1974, the Kootenai Tribe, headed by chairwoman Amy Trice, declared war on the United States government over its aboriginal land, and the dispute ended with a federal land grant of 10.5 acres that is now the Kootenai Reservation.

Two international border crossings connect Bonners Ferry with British Columbia, Canada: the Porthill-Rykerts crossing to Creston and the Eastport-Kingsgate crossing to Yahk.