Potlatch is a city in the northwest United States, located in north central Idaho in Latah County, about six miles (10 km) east of the link up with Washington. On the Palouse north of Moscow, it is served by State Highway 6, and bordered upon the northeast by the little community of Onaway. The population of Potlatch was 804 at the 2010 census.

In 1903, Frederick Weyerhaeuser incorporated the Potlatch Lumber Company (eventually becoming the Potlatch Corporation), naming his son Charles as the President. The directors of the company selected Canadian lumberman William Deary to construct a mill somewhere within the company’s timber holdings. The townsite was chosen because of proximity to the company’s large holdings of Western White Pine upon the Palouse River. Potlatch was prearranged as the mill site, and in 1904, crews working below W.A. Wilkinson of Minnesota began constructing what would be the largest white pine sawmill in the world.

Because of the remote placement of the mill, Potlatch was built as a company town to provide housing and commerce for the mill. A total of 143 houses were built in 1906, with 58 more built the bearing in mind year; other building constructed during that period adjoin boarding houses, an ice house, a Catholic church, hotel, school, and general store.

The company developed and ran Potlatch on a model mostly patterned later used by Pullman Company for its company town in Illinois. It allow police and blaze protection, a school, churches, a hospital, an within your means company store, and recreational amenities. It banned prostitution, prohibited alcohol, and encouraged its workers to marry by allowing isolated married couples to rent the houses it owned. The paternalism was profitable, even though rents were low: during 1943 the company showed a gain of $59,000 for its “townsite” services. Less than a decade later, with labor costs significantly reducing its townsite profit, the mill sold most of the homes and new buildings it owned, and Potlatch was incorporated.