President Donald Trump approved Idaho’s disaster declaration for local counties this week in response to this past spring’s flooding and landslides.

According to the Idaho Office of Emergency Management, the counties covered in this disaster declaration include Nez Perce, Latah, Clearwater, Benewah, Bonner and Kootenai counties.

Idaho counties suffered nearly $6 million in damage from the severe flooding, landslides and wind gusts between March 11 and 15, according to the state. Thousands of people lost power and roads were heavily damaged. Wind gusts reached nearly 100 mph in some areas.

A lot of volunteer work, but not a lot of money, has gone into a state-led effort in Hawaii as part of a nationwide initiative to commemorate the founding of the United States 250 years ago.

The local effort assigned to a 19-member commission formed in early 2024 has led to a series of events around the state scheduled before, on and after the July 4 anniversary.

Events include Hawaii grade-school students who competed in a national contest expressing what America means to them, production and distribution of more than 100 America250 flags, and coordinating a planned mass reading of the Declaration of Independence at about 65 places around the state at noon on July 8.

Hawaii, however, won’t have a delegation from the commission participating in the Great American State Fair due to cost and staffing requirements. The 16-day exposition began Thursday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and was promoted as featuring exhibits from all 50 states and U.S. territories.

The Hawai‘i America250 Commission was set up by Gov. Josh Green at the direction of the state Legislature with no state funding, and has been led in part by several Hawaii residents whose ancestors fought in the American revolution or contributed to the patriotic effort to establish the United States of America in 1776.

Peter Young — a former state Department of Land and Natural Resources director, commission chair, and member of the Hawaii Society of Sons of the American Revolution — said Hawai‘i America250 secured $25,000 in contributions, including $20,000 from the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission.

“It would have been less pressure if we had a big appropriation,” he said. “But we didn’t. And so we got to work with what we have.”

The nationwide America250 initiative led by the federal government is supposed to be bipartisan, but there has been friction between the Republican-led federal government and state government in Hawaii dominated by Democrats in other areas of program funding.

State Rep. Diamond Garcia — a Republican elected after lawmakers passed a 2022 resolution urging the governor to form the commission but provided no funding — praised commissioners for their dedication but said legislative leaders and the governor didn’t give the mission much focus, in his view.

“It obviously wasn’t top of mind for them,” said Garcia (R, Ewa-Kapolei), the minority floor leader in the House of Representatives.

The governor’s office said in a statement that Green’s administration appreciates the work of the Hawai‘i America250 Commission and many community partners helping to mark the nation’s historic milestone.

“Decisions regarding specific events and activities have reflected available resources and priorities,” the statement said, “and the Governor is pleased that Hawaii is contributing to the commemoration in ways that highlight our state’s unique history, people and values.”

Thrifty programming

Young said the commission, whose members include representatives of the four county mayors and the governor’s office, largely tried to develop or participate in programs that had little or no cost.

The commission’s biggest expense was close to $12,000 to buy around 130 custom-made America250 flags.

The first 20 flags were bought using $2,000 of a $10,000 grant from the national commission. Later, another roughly 110 flags were bought using a second $10,000 grant from the national organization originating from Walmart.

Young said the flags were distributed to ROTC clubs at high schools and the University of Hawaii where they have been featured at sporting events and other ceremonies. About 30 flags were provided to the state, and each county headquarters building also flies an America250 flag from the commission. Local chapters of the Sons of the American Revolution and Daughters of the American Revolution also received flags to promote the anniversary.

Many of the flags have been featured in past events and will be featured in local Fourth of July parades.

The parades are annual events put on by other community organizations, and the commission aims to enhance participation. One parade, in Kailua, is expected to be the biggest, featuring 10,000 to 15,000 people, according to Young, who said the commission plans to send an America250 marching unit with seven color guards and 250 people.

The commission also is arranging to have a large America250 marching unit with a color guard in other Fourth of July parades, including one in Kailua-Kona where about 10,000 people are normally expected.

After the flags, the second-biggest purchase by the commission was 30,000 decorative magnets featuring the America250 logo for distribution at the parades and other Fourth of July events on every island, including county-sponsored fireworks displays.

Major event

One widespread semiquincentennial event organized by the commission is a mass reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 8 simultaneously with people around the world coordinated by the national America250 organization.

This event, dubbed “Sharing the Spirit of America,” commemorates the first public reading of the 1,320-word document on July 8, 1776, outside the Pennsylvania State House now known as Independence Hall.

At least 526 locations globally, including on every continent and some inhabited Pacific atolls, are designated public group reading places, including about 65 in Hawaii mainly at public libraries, schools and county headquarters buildings.

The reading is to begin at 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, which is noon in Hawaii, and should take about 10 minutes. A map of the locations is at hawaii america250.org.

To promote this event, the commission prerecorded a video with 36 local participants reading sections of the document, including Hawaii’s governor and four county mayors. As of last week, editors were still working on the video, which the commission plans to feature on its website and on YouTube.

Another low-cost or no-cost way for Hawaii to join national America250 programming was the commission’s promotion of a student contest called America’s Field Trip.

The nationwide contest held this year and in the prior two years asked students from third to 12th grade to express in an essay or artwork what America means to them.

Young said the commission helped promote the contest in Hawaii public and private schools where a different local student placed second in each year and earned $500.

Fundraising difficulty

A major shortcoming of the commission was having to sit out the national fair despite efforts to participate.

State funding, Garcia said, would have been a worthy investment, similar to the support the state often provides for trade shows.

“We are the last state to enter the union,” he said. “We are the 50th star in the flag. We should be represented on the National Mall at America’s Great State Fair.”

Young said it was costing some other states $200,000 to $250,000 to participate in the 16-day event.

”We had multiple people looking all over to try to get money for that,” he said. “We could not get commitments for large amounts of money.”

The only America250 commemoration business partners listed by the local commission are Home Depot and Zippy’s.

Young said raising large donations in Hawaii was challenging, and he pointed to lingering public resentment over the U.S. role in overthrowing the Hawaiian Kingdom as one possible factor.

“There has been some sensitivity and recognition that some people may not want to celebrate (America’s founding),” he said. “But it is a moment in history that is worth commemorating.”

Young noted that Hawaii was not known to the western world when British subjects declared their independence from England in America where 13 colonies formed an initial piece of a new country. The sovereign Hawaiian government, Young also said, later drew on language in the Declaration of Independence when it began a shift in 1839 from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy long before the 1893 overthrow and annexation of Hawaii as a territory in 1898.

“If (Thomas) Jefferson didn’t write what he did, and if the Second Continental Congress didn’t approve … the Declaration of Independence, then we may not have had the same kind of declaration of rights or constitutions which were the first governance documents for the Hawaiian Kingdom,” Young said. “There’s a connection, and it’s not a bad connection. So, maybe not celebrate, but commemorate, acknowledging (American independence) was a historical event.”

Young said some of the people who helped establish America made sacrifices — including those who lost their lives — that benefit all Hawaii residents today.

“We, as Americans, have certain rights,” he said. “Other people don’t have those same kinds of rights we do, and those rights are because of what (the founders) did 250 years ago.”

For the first time that I can recall, I found myself jealous of waterfowl.

And as vigilant as one must be in dodging rocks, they’re much easier to evade than raindrops.

Or hail, for that matter.

It had been nearly 20 years since I’d floated the Smith River, one of the premier locations for outdoor excursions in the state of Montana.

Despite its close proximity to Great Falls and the privilege of less stringent access, I hadn’t made the effort as an adult to enjoy the scenic journey practically in my backyard.

The trek was not easy, and by day’s end I was overcome with a lethargy almost two decades in the making.

However, as I’ve been reminded, a day’s effort was a small price to pay for enduring memories.

What and where is Montana’s Smith River?

The Smith River is a tributary of the Missouri River that spans 121 miles starting near White Sulphur Springs in Meagher County.

It flows between several mountain ranges to the mouth, where it dumps into the Missouri near Ulm, about 10 miles south of Great Falls.

The river was named after Robert Smith, the Secretary of the Navy under President Thomas Jefferson, by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Meriwether Lewis dubbed it in an 1805 journal recording, “Smith’s River,” according to Montana State Library archives.

Located in historic Blackfeet territory, the area was eventually occupied by white settlers through various treaties between the tribe and the U.S. government.

The Act of Congress of 1874 moved the southern border of the Blackfeet territory 200 miles north, formally making settlement legal under U.S. law, according to educational materials from the Office of Public Instruction, although no compensation to the Blackfeet was given for the territory ceded.

Today, the Smith River Corridor — the 59-mile stretch of the river open to permitted floating in Smith River State Park — is managed by the Parks and Outdoor Recreation Division of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service.

Permitted floaters launch at Camp Baker, and the full journey to the Eden Bridge takes a minimum of three full days and two nights at approved camp sites, according to FWP.

A place for family

My dad, Mark Higgins, and his brothers frequented the Smith River area in their youth through a connection of their father, Alan “Lefty” Higgins.

My dad was able to purchase a cabin in the Castle Bar section of the Smith in the mid-1980s. It has now evolved into a family cabin, owned and curated by members of the extended family.

Some of my fondest memories come from times at the Smith, as family from California, Oregon and Washington all congregate at our place at various times each summer.

The Higgins cabin is one of the many things in my life that I am privileged to be a part of, and one that I strive to never take for granted.

 The float begins at Camp Baker

The commute to Camp Baker is aesthetically identical to the one from Great Falls to the family cabin, moving along stretches of gravel backroads meandering through rolling hills and grasslands. The trip is scenic in its own way yet doesn’t give much of a hint of the views to come.

Unlike the usual gathering of cows from adjoining cattle ranches stopping to graze along the road, on this morning we were temporarily stopped by a small herd of elk making its way across — a sight I have only seen a handful of times in 30-some years.

The last time I floated the Smith was around the Fourth of July in 2007. My most vivid memory from the trip, aside from the scenery, was being inadvertently hit in the head by an oar and breaking the pair of knockoff Oakley sunglasses I’d bought on the street in New York on vacation.

As we set out from Camp Baker in our four-person raft and accompanying kayaker, I was reminded early and often how less-than-leisurely the float is, particularly in the conditions of the day.

On float day, the Smith was flowing at just over 160 cubic feet per second, according to the rangers at Camp Baker, which is a little over half of the “normal” flow of 300 cfs designated by FWP.

It seemed as soon as you’d evade one rock or shoot the gap between a pair, there was another right in your path.

I quickly became jealous of the ducks and geese we encountered frequently throughout, who navigated the river unconcerned with ducklings and goslings in tow, and whose instincts always seemed to point to the perfect “V” in the water’s flow.

Most rock encounters ended harmlessly with scrapes along the bottom of the raft or, at most, would stop us dead in our tracks. However, one passenger did take an involuntary dip as we collided sideways with a large rock, thankfully ending only in wet clothes and a soaked raincoat.

So went about the first half of our 21-mile, one-day float, as we attempted to dodge rocks through several bursts of heavy rain and another of hail.

Thankfully, as Mother Nature can humble you in one moment, it can also be quite generous.

If these walls could talk

Even if you were unencumbered by the task of navigating the river, it’d be impossible to take in the full picture of the Smith River Corridor, situated between the Big Belt Mountains to the west and Little Belt and Castle ranges to the east.

You see hillsides often greater than a 45-degree angle densely filled with tall skinny trees, with rock formations dug into and jutting out from the earth.

The cliff walls can reach over 100 feet high in places, each with its own distinct shape and pattern after millennia of erosion.

The cliff formations are almost as perfect as they are imperfect, as ornate as they are abstract, sometimes forming shelves, steps or ledges. Some of the bigger cliffs are commonly equated to cathedrals, almost as if chiseled in intricate and deliberate detail.

Each formation tells its own story, as if structures from an ancient civilization had been overcome by nature.

Past the Tenderfoot Creek — nearing the end of our day’s float — approaching the Castle Bar area is maybe the most beautiful stretch. The story goes that the area was named for the castle-like cliffs, with smaller rock formations on top resembling guards keeping a lookout from on high.

It’s easy to get caught up in your surroundings, falling into a dream state as you imagine the stories this landscape could tell.

The end of the journey

The flow of the river picked up significantly past the Tenderfoot, covering up most of the pesky rocks like those that had stymied the group early on.

The last five or six miles of the trip were far more serene as we took in the sights unencumbered and began to recognize the landmarks signaling our approach to Castle Bar.

There was a strong sense of accomplishment as the raft made its final landing on the shore of our destination, with the sun beginning to creep below the cliff line after a nearly 11-hour day on the water.

One participant declared this was their last float down the Smith, which seemed a reasonable decision as we wearily organized our gear on the riverbank.

After some rest, I hope that it wasn’t my last long float down the river that has come to mean so much to me and my family.

Maybe I’ll give it a go in another 20 years.  

***

How can I float the Smith River?

Due to its popularity, the Smith is the only river in Montana to run on a permit system. Permits are granted through a lottery, and roughly 10% of those who enter receive permits — and only 10 % of those granted can go to out-of-state residents.

Applications for the lottery open on Jan. 1 and can be submitted to FWP until mid-February each year, with the lottery drawing occurring shortly after. Those who draw a permit are assigned a float day in the typical floating season from mid-April to mid-July, aside from one Super Permit winner, who is allowed to pick a day of their choosing.

Groups can consist of up to 15 people, and 9-10 groups per day set out from Camp Baker. The cost per floater is $25 for Montana residents 13 and older, $15 for children ages 6-12 and $60 for non-resident floaters over 13.

Groups are limited to four nights on the Smith and must camp at assigned campgrounds.

Those who don’t enter the lottery can also hire a private outfitter to float the river. There are seven outfitters who are approved by Montana State Parks and U.S. Forest Service to provide services on the Smith River.

For more information and FAQs on the float, visit fwp.mt.gov/stateparks/smith-river.