Lecture traces Leiberg's journey to Missoula floods

RITZVILLE — Spokane’s Jack Nisbet is lecturing here April 2 on the inspiration for his latest book, “The Dreamer and the Doctor.”

The book traces the journey of prospector John Leiberg and his physician wife, Carrie, across the intermountain west and beyond. Leiberg was an immigrant prospector and plant-lover who homesteaded on Lake Pend Oreille in northern Idaho.

During the 1890s, he worked as a forest surveyor, always with an eye for how the landscapes he viewed might have formed. Leiberg’s descriptions of flood features, glacial lakes, and scoured landscapes provide some of the first writte...