Kris Runberg Smith with Tom Weitz

Kris Runberg Smith has been fascinated by Priest Lake stories since she was a child. Her first opportunity to explore the region’s real history came while she was a graduate student thirty years ago. Grant funds allowed her to create the Priest Lake oral history project and collect and copy historical images. The materials she gathered decades earlier made her research and writing for Wild Place: A History of Priest Lake possible—a labor of love over four summers.

Smith is a professor of history at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Saint Louis University, an M.A. in American History from Washington State University, and a B.A. in Museum Science from the University of Idaho. She has written for both academic and popular audiences, and edited Pioneer Voices of Priest Lake for the Priest Lake Museum in 2007. Her family connections to the cherished vacation spot date back to 1897, when her great-great grandfather came as a timber cruiser.

As president of the Priest Lake Museum Association since 2011, Tom Weitz often lamented the lack of a trustworthy regional history—a void that made it difficult to create historical exhibits. During a conversation with Smith, the pair decided it was time to combine his organizational skills, her history background, and the museum’s resources to tackle the project.

Weitz is a retired geologist and mining manager. He earned a M.S. degree in Geosciences from the University of Arizona, and a B.S. degree in Geology from Washington State University. Tom first came to Priest Lake in 1959, and now lives at the lake full time with his wife Anne.