[3] Once surrounded by arid grasslands of the Columbia Plateau adjacent to the western foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the Potlatch today is used mainly for agriculture and irrigation purposes.

Its name derives from potlatch, a type of ceremony held by the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest; one such tribe lived along the river for hundreds of years before the arrival of settlers.

Before logging and agriculture, many varieties of riparian and forest plants once populated the catchment, and several species of fish still swim the river and its tributaries.

Idaho State Highway 3 follows part of the lower canyon, and the town of Juliaetta is located at the Middle Potlatch Creek confluence.

[5] The Potlatch River area was once a broad sweep of dry grassland bordered by forested mountains, on the eastern edge of the arid Columbia Plateau.

[2] The native environment stayed relatively intact until settlers began to arrive in western Idaho in great numbers in the 1870s, and miners also were attracted by a gold strike at nearby Orofino, on the banks of the Clearwater River.

Soil conditions generally improve as one travels southwards through the watershed, but there was a major drawback to growing crops in the southern part of the basin: the inaccessibility of water.

Farmers were restricted to growing crops that did not require irrigation, and many of the lands that did not have access to abundant-enough water were relegated to pasture or hay producing status.

Unfortunately, railroad embankments and fills used to build up tributaries had artificially straightened them in the process, and erosion increased dramatically on the barren hillside, causing many streams to become much siltier than they naturally would be.

[3] According to a study from 2003 to 2004, there were 13 different species of fish in the Potlatch River watershed, including speckled dace, longnose dace, rainbow trout (both wild and farm-raised), brook trout, largemouth bass, pumpkinseed, northern pikeminnow, redside shiner, sculpin, bridgelip sucker, largescale sucker, and yellow perch.

[11] Migration of steelhead, the anadromous phase of rainbow trout, has been impacted by the construction of dams downstream on the Snake and Columbia Rivers.

Of all the streams sampled during the study, the West Fork Potlatch River had the highest diversity because of its relatively pristine condition.

[16] Fishing is permitted on the Potlatch from its mouth upstream to where Moose Creek joins the river near Bovill, as well as on the East Fork.