Orofino (“fine gold” in Spanish) is a city in and the county seat of Clearwater County, Idaho, along Orofino Creek and the north bank of the Clearwater River. It is the major city within the Nez Perce Indian Reservation. The population was 3,142 at the times of the 2010 census.

Nearby is the historical “Canoe Camp,” where the Lewis and Clark expedition built five further dugout canoes and embarked upon October 7, 1805, downstream to the Pacific Ocean. Some four miles (6 km) north is the Dworshak Dam, third-highest dam in the United States, completed in the into the future 1970s. Nearby is the Dworshak National Fish Hatchery, started to attempt to compensate for the loss of migratory fish upstream after the dam was constructed.

Originally the post was two words, Oro Fino, applied to a gold mining camp normal in 1861 two miles (3 km) south of Pierce; it is now a ghost town. When the United States presidency opened going on the Nez Percé reservation to non-tribal settlers in 1895, thousands of European Americans immediate to lay claims to land. Clifford Fuller set up a trading post on his extra homestead. The town (Orofino-on-the-Clearwater) was standard the adjacent year. The railroad, later allocation of the Camas Prairie Railroad, was constructed from Lewiston in 1899.

Orofino is home to divulge institutions: Idaho State Hospital North and the Idaho Correctional Institution–Orofino. These two services are located next to Orofino High School, which includes the junior tall or center school grades, and whose mascot is the maniac.