Cruise night to craft cocktails: what Sherman Avenue used to be

From the 1970s to the 2000s, downtown Coeur d'Alene belonged to cruising teens and a few loud bars. Here is what the record shows, and what the street is now.

For a lot of people who grew up here, downtown Coeur d'Alene means the loop.

THE LOOP

On weekend nights, kids drove the length of Sherman Avenue, swung around at the Big Y truck stop on the east end, and looped back through the Topper lot at 17th and Robby's Drive-In on Sixth. The habit goes back to at least the 1960s, and a woman who cheered in the 1980s told the Coeur d'Alene Press it was hugely popular in her day.

You may have heard the city shut cruising down in the 1990s. The record says it didn't go quietly. In July 2000 the Spokesman-Review still called Fifth and Sherman the center of the cruise, starting around 9 p.m. What the city did was push back:

- In 1999 the Downtown Association put up six speakers playing classical music to discourage loitering. After thefts, only two were left.
- In 2000 the city passed a new noise ordinance and bought three noise meters.
- That spring it asked for $175,455 in federal money for a police substation on Sherman, citing about $50,000 in vandalism over two years. Someone had cut the wires on the music speakers.
- After teens damaged trees at Sixth and Sherman in June 2000, police put spotlights on the crowd and a $400 reward went up.

Merchants complained about litter and worse. The teens had their own view. "This is a town for tourists. It's not a town for us," a 21-year-old named Shawn Smith told the Spokesman that summer. A city councilman ran a teen club, the Spotlight, at First and Indiana for about two years. It closed after gang members from out of town started showing up. By 2004 the city was writing a new curfew ordinance.

THE CLUBS

Hollywood Nights, the dance club, left almost no paper trail. If you went, we want to hear from you (see below).

Mik-n-Mac's got written about. Two women, Rita and Kirsten, the Mik and Mac of the name, opened it on North Fourth Street in the late 1990s as a bar where everyone was welcome, rainbow flags and all. Rita has been the sole owner from the start. By 2008 the Spokesman called it sometimes the only real nightclub downtown. A sale fell through in 2009, so she remodeled and reopened. Staff said she banned anyone who started a fight.

Mik's closed on Feb. 14, 2026, after 28 years. It leased its liquor license and its space from VFW Post 889, and a 2023 state law, Senate Bill 1120, ended the leasing of liquor licenses. The VFW plans to use the space for veterans and the community.

THE IRON HORSE

If one place runs through all of it, it is the Iron Horse at 407 E. Sherman Ave.. Tom Robb opened it on June 2, 1972. He bought the Brunswick Cafe for its liquor license, and the bar now fills three old buildings. It ranked among the top five in liquor sales in Idaho, and by the Press's count was No. 1 for 12 straight years. Its 48-ounce Derailer is trademarked. When most of downtown closed in protest of the Aryan Nations march in 1999, the Iron Horse stayed open. It never closed at all until COVID, and it reopened in May 2020. Robb's sons ran it by its 50th birthday in 2022, and chef Jason Rex took over the steakhouse side that October.

CRICKET'S

Cricket's Restaurant and Oyster Bar has been at 424 E. Sherman since 1985 and changed owners in 2011. It hasn't closed. It split in two: Cricket's now uses the Fifth Street door, and River & Rye, a craft-cocktail room, took the Sherman Avenue side. If you want one picture of how Sherman changed, that's a good one.

THE DIRT

- 1999: A Car d'Lane Friday night turned into what papers called a riot. Police used rubber bullets and pepper spray on a crowd of about 3,000 and made about 20 arrests. It started when an officer stopped a motorcyclist for doing a burn-out outside a bar, and witnesses said police overreacted.
- 2011: After the Car d'Lane cruise, police gave out 68 open-container warnings, most to Iron Horse customers. That fall, the police log had fights of 10 or more people outside the Beacon and the Rendezvous.
- 2016: Fire gutted the Beacon Pub and the Pita Pit's headquarters at Fourth and Sherman.
- 2021: Police logged 122 calls at four downtown bars by early February: the Moose, the Beacon, Mik's and the Iron Horse. Most were blamed on visitors from Washington. The Corner Bar briefly stopped taking Washington IDs.

WHAT CHANGED IT

Two big projects reshaped downtown. The Coeur d'Alene Resort opened in May 1986 on the old North Shore hotel site, in what the Spokesman called a faltering mill town. And in 2014 a $20 million rebuild of McEuen Park replaced about 50 years of lakefront parking lot.

WHAT SHERMAN IS NOW

The cruise never really died. The city gave it a schedule. Car d'Lane is a June tradition run by the Downtown Association: a Friday night cruise down Sherman that draws thousands, a Saturday car show and an auction. The noise fight never ended either. The city adopted a vehicle noise and exhaust ordinance in 2024 and wrote six tickets in the first month.

The bars are changing because of the law. With leased licenses outlawed, other bars that lease their licenses could close as their contracts run out, the way Mik's did.

WERE YOU THERE?

The papers missed a lot. If you have a memory or a photo of Hollywood Nights, the cruise loop or the old Sherman bars, send it to K County Media. We will add the best of them to this story, with your name if you want it there.