In response to these damaging factors, the water quality overall in the Latah Creek basin is quite low, and "Washington State water quality standards for temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and fecal coliforms are routinely violated.

[7] The name "Latah" stems from a Nez Perce word meaning "a place of pines and sestles", or "fish".

[1][8][9] Latah Creek begins east of the town of Sanders, in Benewah County, Idaho.

A few miles after its headwaters, it receives the South Fork Latah Creek, which flows north.

At the confluence, the creek turns north, flowing past the towns of Sanders and De Smet, entering channeled scablands that have been converted to farmland.

Still small, it runs northwest in a vegetation-choked gully for several miles, beginning to parallel Latah Creek Road.

The creek then crosses the Idaho-Washington state border and flows through Tekoa, where it is channelized and runs due north for a short distance.

Latah Creek then continues north, and begins to parallel U.S. Highway 195 as it winds through a widening gorge towards the urban area of Spokane.

As Highway 195 continues to parallel it on the left, High Drive winds along the canyon rim on the east (right) bank.

Moctileme Creek is about 6 miles (9.7 km) long, flowing west from Windfall Pass and mostly paralleling State Route 60.

Latah Creek can be divided into three distinct geological regions; these are a small section of its upper headwaters, a long and broad valley, and channeled scablands.

Below the deep loess in the Palouse Hills, a basalt layer separates the creek from groundwater, which finally rises to meet stream elevation at the Washington-Idaho state border.

[11] Most of the creek from where it turns north at Sanders to about 20 miles (32 km) upstream of its mouth flows in a broad and shallow, arid valley atop several hundred feet of alluvial deposits.

In the final 20 miles (32 km), the Latah Creek watershed intersects the Channeled Scablands, which were formed by the Missoula Floods that inundated the area after an ice dam on the Clark Fork Pend Oreille River, during the last ice age, was breached.

[13] The watershed of Latah Creek covers 673 square miles (1,740 km2), stretching from southeast to northwest and straddling the Washington-Idaho state border.

The mostly semiarid basin is divided mostly among forests and agriculture, with small towns spread along the length of the creek and its tributaries.

[8] A single known bog lay beside Latah Creek for many tens of thousands of years, dating from the previous Ice Age.

This bog was discovered in May 1876 by a homesteader, Benjamin Coplen, who found what seemed to be a gigantic bone in the peat-covered water.

Nearby homesteaders William and Thomas Donahoe also drained a similar bog and located more bones and a skull.

[19] It was later proposed that the Missoula Floods were responsible for depositing a "bathtub ring" in the channeled scablands of Washington and Idaho, including in this particular bog.

[20] It was said that in the early 19th century, Latah Creek was a clear and pristine stream that provided suitable habitat for anadromous fish.

[21] Because of the aridity of its basin and the increasing pollution in Latah Creek and many of its tributaries, it is no longer a productive watershed for fishes and other aquatic species.

It was examined in the vicinity of Tekoa, Washington, where it was found to be a small filthy stream not suitable for trout but well supplied with minnows and suckers of several species.