A New Idea in Coeur d’Alene

Photos Courtesy Marlene Faulkner

John Finney was an inventive fellow. In the 1920’s, he had an idea. An avid cross-country skier, John decided to try his skis behind the family boat. When it didn’t work, he took some boards off the family barn, steamed the tips and nailed on a pair of shoes. Soon, John Finney was cruising Lake Coeur d’Alene on his new invention – water skis.


That wasn’t the first of the innovations by the Finney family. A few years earlier, John’s father, Jack, modified a car engine to power the family boat. After seeing how fast the boat could go, they tied a surfboard to the back and took up “aquaplaning,” a popular sport in those days.


Before long, the Finney family began performing tricks on the aquaplane. “If you think of gymnastic stunts, where people made human pyramids, that sort of thing, that’s what they did on the aquaplane,” says John Finney’s daughter, Marlo Faulkner. Soon, the performing Finneys were in demand. They traveled the West demonstrating their “aquaplane acrobatics.”


Capitalizing on his water skiing fame, John Finney began taking tourists on sightseeing trips. Before long, he was looking for a bigger boat. In 1932, he bought a 65-foot boat. He called it the Seeweewana, which he said meant “traveling across the water” in the language of the Coeur d’Alene Indians. For the next 50 years, Captain John and the Seeweewana were fixtures on the lake.


Business boomed during World War II when men and women from nearby military bases came to Coeur d’Alene to relax. “I’m always meeting people who say, when they find out I’m from Coeur d’Alene, say ‘I was north of Coeur d’Alene during the war at Farragut’ and remembered going out on the boat.”


During his 50 years behind the wheel, Captain John showed thousands of people the beauty of Lake Coeur d’Alene. In 1983, Finney sold the business to the Hagadone Corporation. A few years later, the Seeweewana, retired and in disrepair, was sunk to create an underwater park and a new set of memories for visitors to Lake Coeur d’Alene.


The Finney Family, Enriching the Lore of the Lake They Love.
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