How Rathdrum grew: from the first county seat to homes on the prairie

In 1970, 741 people lived in Rathdrum. As of July 2025, the Census Bureau estimates 13,227. That is nearly 18 times as many people. From 2020 to 2025 alone, the town grew 43.6%.

Rathdrum was the county's first seat of government, then a quiet farm town for most of a century. Now it is filling in with new neighborhoods. This is how it happened, what's being built, and what it is costing the schools and roads.

The first county seat

The town started out as Westwood, named for rancher Charles Wesley Wood. In 1881 the federal government turned down that name for a post office, and the town took the name Rathdrum, after a village in Ireland. That same year it became the first organized county seat of Kootenai County, according to the county's own history.

The Northern Pacific Railway came through in 1882. For a few years after the railroad arrived, Rathdrum was bigger than the young towns at Spokane and Coeur d'Alene, the Spokesman-Review reported. In October 1884, a fire burned 55 buildings and six city blocks, including the business district. The town rebuilt.

Then the center of the county moved south. Coeur d'Alene became the county seat in 1908. Rathdrum had 725 people in 1910 and 509 in 1920, Census counts show. In 1970 it had 741, about the same as 60 years before.

Farms to subdivisions

For most of the 1900s, farmers on the Rathdrum Prairie grew bluegrass seed. That ended as the practice of burning the fields each year was phased out. In the three decades since, the Spokesman-Review reported, the old fields have given way to thousands of new homes.

The Census numbers show it. Rathdrum went from 2,000 people in 1990 to 4,816 in 2000, more than doubling. It reached 6,826 in 2010 and 9,211 in 2020.

What's being built now

Most of what is being built in Rathdrum is homes. The largest project is Solara, a Hayden Homes neighborhood on 157 acres between Boekel and Meyer roads. It would add 436 homes in ten phases, plus 21 lots for industry. In October 2025, the planning commission said it would recommend approval to the City Council, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported. Neighbors raised traffic and water pressure at the hearing. One resident said her home often lacks the pressure to shower. The city's public works director said the water supply is enough.

North of Highway 53, about half a mile northeast of Lakeland High School, Viking Construction is building Westwood Pines, a 52-acre neighborhood that shares the town's original name. It has 164 single-family homes and 192 apartments in eight three-story buildings, plus 10 acres for shops, restaurants, a gas station and a car wash. The apartments are expected to be finished in August 2027, the Spokane Journal of Business reported in July.

Smaller projects keep coming too. In September 2025, the City Council unanimously approved Meyer Meadows First Addition, 71 home lots averaging about 9,900 square feet at Lancaster Avenue and Radcliff Street.

The homes, and what they cost

The Census Bureau's survey puts the median home value in Rathdrum at $444,100 and the median household income at $86,563. That means the typical home costs a little over five years of the typical household's pay.

The Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization, the region's transportation planner, counts about 5,200 households in Rathdrum today. It expects about 9,900 more homes by 2050.

The schools

Growth shows up first in the classrooms. In the fall of 2021, enrollment in the Lakeland Joint School District hit a record 4,718 students, 377 more than the district had projected. At least 15 classrooms in nine of its 12 schools were over capacity, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported. The school board voted down an emergency levy for more teachers and classrooms.

Since then, Lakeland voters have been split. A levy failed narrowly in March 2023, then passed narrowly when the board put it back on the ballot that May. A replacement levy failed in November 2024 with 48% support, Idaho Education News reported. In May 2025, a smaller two-year levy of $7.52 million a year passed with 66% of the vote.

This year the district asked for something different. A plant facilities levy of $3 million a year for five years would have paid for heating and cooling upgrades, bathroom repairs, new tracks at Timberlake High School and Lakeland High School, and other facility work. The district's newest school, Twin Lakes Elementary, is more than 20 years old. That levy failed on May 19.

The roads

Highway 41 is Rathdrum's main road to Post Falls and I-90. In 2022, the state finished widening it to four divided lanes from Mullan Avenue to Boekel Road, with new bridges over the railroad. The cost was about $57 million, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported.

Highway 53, the road west toward Spokane, is next. A new interchange at Pleasant View Road near Hauser removes three railroad crossings. It fully opened to traffic in late September 2026, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported, and Prairie Avenue and McGuire Road no longer connect to the highway. The state expects the rest of the project to wrap up in spring 2027. Work on a center lane from Bruss Road to Latah Street is planned to start in 2029, and a rebuild from the state line to Hauser Lake Road in 2030, the Spokesman-Review reported.

Where it's headed

KMPO projects Rathdrum will reach about 41,300 people by 2050. That would be about three times the town's size today.

The old county seat lost the courthouse more than a century ago. Now it is gaining neighborhoods on the old farmland around it. Live here, or thinking about it? Tell us what you're seeing. Every number in this story names its source below.