How Post Falls grew: from a sawmill on the river to the county's next big city

In 1970, about 2,400 people lived in Post Falls. Today the Census Bureau estimates about 46,700. That's almost twenty times as many people in a little over fifty years, and the region's planners expect Post Falls to keep going until it is the biggest city in Kootenai County.

This is how it happened, what's coming next, and what it costs to keep up.

A mill, a city, an outlet mall

Post Falls started with a sawmill. In 1871, a German immigrant named Frederick Post arrived and later built a lumber mill at the falls on the Spokane River, on land he bought from Andrew Seltice, chief of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe. The deal is remembered with a pictograph at Treaty Rock Park. Post Falls became a city in 1891.

For most of the 1900s it stayed small. Then came two big jumps. Between 1970 and 1980 the town more than doubled, from 2,371 people to 5,736, according to Census counts. Between 1990 and 2000 it more than doubled again, from 7,349 to 17,247.

That second jump came with Interstate 90 shopping. The Post Falls Factory Outlets opened in 1991 and once held about 50 brand-name stores, the Spokesman-Review reported. When the Great Recession and online shopping emptied it, a developer bought it in 2016 and turned it into the 180,000-square-foot Tedder Business Center.

On the west side, Cabela's opened a 125,000-square-foot store at The Pointe at Post Falls in 2007. Five years later, in November 2012, the Beck Road interchange opened on I-90. A developer built it and was repaid with sales taxes from Cabela's, Walmart and the other stores at The Pointe.

The boom years

Post Falls grew about 60% in the 2000s and another 40% in the 2010s. From 2020 to 2024 alone it grew 18.6%, which ranked 70th in the nation, KXLY reported.

The state has been racing to keep the roads ahead of it. From 2020 to 2022, Highway 41 was widened from two lanes to four for about six miles toward Rathdrum, a $51.5 million project. Post Falls and Rathdrum chipped in $5.7 million. Before the widening it carried about 13,000 vehicles a day. It was rebuilt for about 21,000.

Then came the $78 million rebuild of the I-90 and Highway 41 interchange, from 2022 to this fall, and four years of I-90 widening east toward Coeur d'Alene, which started in August 2025 and is due to finish in 2029.

What's being built now

The largest is a factory. Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories is investing $150 million in a Post Falls plant that makes equipment to protect the power grid. It's expected to bring about 250 jobs when it opens in 2027, the Spokane Journal of Business reported in September.

Health care is the other big wave. Nutex Health opened an emergency room and small hospital on Beck Road in 2024, its first in Idaho. MultiCare and Kootenai Health have announced a 30-acre medical campus at Highway 41 and Prairie Avenue, starting with a micro-hospital with a 12-room ER, MRI and CT imaging, and a surgery center. Encompass Health plans a 50-bed rehab hospital.

Neighborhood shopping is filling in too. North Point Plaza, a $20 million center at Highway 41 and Poleline Avenue, was built around a Grocery Outlet and a 7-Eleven, with room left for more shops. And the city is building the 26-acre Quarry Sports Complex west of Highway 41, paid for mostly with park impact fees that new homes pay, plus a federal grant.

The homes, and what they cost

The Census Bureau's survey puts the median home value in Post Falls at $477,400 and the median household income at $82,183. Divide one by the other and the typical home costs nearly six years of the typical household's pay.

The city's housing assessment found Post Falls needs about 2,400 more homes over five years, and that nearly two-thirds of senior renters are paying more than they can afford. The Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization counts about 17,400 occupied homes in Post Falls today and expects about 38,000 by 2050.

What it takes to hold it all

Every new home sends water down the drain, and that water ends up in the Spokane River. The river has strict limits on how much phosphorus the city can put into it. To stay under that cap as it grows, Post Falls approved a wastewater plan with nearly $300 million in work over the coming years, including a recycled-water program that keeps some treated water out of the river. The plan calls for 2.5% sewer rate increases each year, and new users pay capacity fees.

Schools are feeling it too. On Nov. 3, the Post Falls School District asked voters for a levy that brings in about $6 million, roughly $3 a month more on a $550,000 home, KXLY reported. Early returns on election night showed it passing. The count is not final until the county certifies it.

The traffic

Out on the Rathdrum Prairie, a state study found eight intersections already at the worst level of rush-hour congestion. If nothing changes, that number climbs to 38 intersections and six road segments by 2045, the Spokesman-Review reported. One idea on the table is a new highway along the Union Pacific rail line from Post Falls to US-95 north of Hayden.

Where it's headed

KMPO, the region's transportation planner, projects Post Falls will add about 54,000 more people by 2050. By its count, Post Falls passes Coeur d'Alene in population around 2045 and reaches about 100,000 people by 2050.

The sawmill town is becoming the county's biggest city. Live here, or thinking about it? Tell us what you're seeing. Every number in this story names its source below.