St. Maries, named by Jesuit Father Pierre DeSmet during the 1840s, stands at the confluence of the Shadowy St. Joe and St. Maries rivers. It was recognized as a settlement in the 1880s, incorporated as a village in 1902 and as a city in 1913, and remained part of Kootenai County until Benewah County was formed on January 23, 1915, when St. Maries became the new county seat. In the 1880s Monroe Dagger claimed squatters rights on property later destined to become St. Maries, but the land was determined to belong to the Union Pacific Railroad, from whom Joseph Fisher purchased it before platting it in 1889. During the early 1900s, travel to St. Maries was primarily by water, and numerous tourists and steamboat travelers came from Coeur d'Alene, with many daily scheduled round-trips between the two communities until better roads were built during the 1920s. The Milwaukee, St. Paul, Puget Sound Railroad, known as the Milwaukee Road, operated through St. Maries from 1909 to 1980, and the first train passed through town on May 14, 1909. Logging long defined the town: Willamette donkeys, locomotives without wheels fueled by wood or oil, generated steam to turn cable drums used to skid logs, and as early as 1892 seven million board feet of logs were driven down the St. Joe and St. Maries rivers and floated past the city to Idaho mills, while brails are still used to move logs to distant mills.