Another Lake Roosevelt Gem: St. Paul's Mission

As you leave Ferry county where I live and cross the bride over Lake Roosevelt into Stevens County, you find St. Paul's Mission. It is on a road behind a historical museum close to the lake. St. Paul's was a Jesuit mission church established near the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Colville, on the bluff overlooking the Columbia River. When you stand on the bluff behind the mission you can see where the Native Americans fished before Grand Coulee Dam was built and the Columbia River became Lake Roosevelt. Here is a stanza of a poem by Ronald Webster that captures this place :

" founded by Jesuit blackrobes

in 1845

in a silent landmark of search

rising up as if Saint Ignatius

and Saint Paul were the only two

visitors in sight; I'm alone,

alone with these two visitors

unseen; Saint Paul's mission

church stands twenty yards

away, inside this aloneness.

An empty church.

An empty church whose stillness

is aloneness spreading out into

pine trees toward the river."

This is a peaceful place to visit. I have brought students here for field trips and a few weeks ago we took the drive behind the museum to take in the natural setting of the mission. It is worth the trip to northeastern Washington to visit this historical site.