District History

The Kootenai County Free Library District (KCFLD) was formed by citizen vote in the summer of 1976. At that time, there were the two districts and six city libraries in Kootenai County: Athol, Coeur d'Alene, Hayden, Harrison, Post Falls, Rathdrum and Spirit Lake (although the City of Spirit Lake never really supported the library and it was technically a volunteer effort). For the first couple of years, (1977, 78), KCFLD and the Coeur d'Alene Library worked together through a joint services contract. That was unilaterally broken by Coeur d'Alene in 1979, and KCFLD emerged independent on 1 July 1979, with an office space at Regional in Dalton Gardens.

In 1982, the Rathdrum City Library and KCFLD consolidated the first ever consolidation in the state between a city and district library.

In 1985, the Hayden Dalton FLD and KCFLD consolidated, which may have been the first ever district/district consolidation in Idaho. Athol actually had voted in 1984 to join KCFLD with the sure knowledge that the Hayden-KCFLD consolidation was going to happen. Spirit Lake petitioned to join the consolidation in the summer of 1985. All these consolidations had an effective date of 1 October 1985 (start of FY1986) which is the date we use to "officially" date the beginning of the present Consolidated Free Library District (still our legal name). We enacted a d.b.a. of Kootenai County Libraries in 1986. Harrison was added in 1994-5 through a citizen voted consolidation, (effective 1 October 1995). The d.b.a. was changed to KSAL in 1996 to reflect the addition of the Pinehurst-Kingston District through consolidation in that year. Pinehurst-Kingston officially became a branch on 1 October 1996 (FY97).