Dover couple: This is 'best place in the world'

The passenger train pulled into the Northern Pacific station at 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 2, 1920. The sign over the station read “Sand Point.” The door opened and a man, his wife and four children, stepped on to the platform in a drizzling rain. They had been traveling from the Ozarks of Missouri to this place that was to be their new home.

The man and woman gathered up the children ranging in age from 2 to 12 years. The three boys and one girl followed their parents over the Cedar Street Bridge to a place on First Avenue where present day Larson's stands. There they rented some rooms upstairs until they could find a house.

The eight-year-old who arrived in town on that rainy day was Leslie Mosher who lived in Sandpoint until his death a few years back. It was my pleasure to get to interview Les and hear some of his story, which I would like to share with you. His story, in his own words, gives a picture of early Sandpoint and Dover.

Question: “Les, will you tell me about your early years in this area?”

Les: “My Dad was a farmer in Missouri and he had an auction sale on Aug. 20, 1920 and sold everything. That's when we moved to Sandpoint. After staying in the place on First Avenue for two to three days my dad rented a house up where the old high school now stands on Euclid. We weren't there very long because dad built a log cabin on Henry Sherwood's place. Six of us lived in the log cabin and I don't know how we managed. You just did the best you could in those days.

“In the spring, dad got a job planting trees near Priest River for a short time. He made some money and we moved to town and rented a house on Olive, which was just a wagon track with big yellow pine trees. We lived there a couple of years and I went to Washington School. Later we moved to 1211 Main Street and I attended Jefferson School. It was on May 15, 1925, that we moved to Dover. My folks had bought a place there and that was home until Ma sold it in 1948-1949.”

Q. “What did you do in Dover and what was Dover like?”

Les: “Dover was quite a little town. It had a hospital and a doctor. It had a boarding house for single men. The mill in Dover was thriving at that time. They had a planing mill, dry kilns and a good yard because it got the draft right up the river. They also had a sash and frame factory and they all belonged to A.C. White. I went to work there when I was 16. I worked in the factory and common labor for a man was about $3.40 a day. A kid or a woman got $2.40 a day.”

“I didn't make much money but that $2.40 fed the family,” Les reflected. “Ma was canning fruit and whatnot. We probably had 100 pounds of sugar in the canning season and you could get 100 pounds for seven dollars. Seven dollars was hard to come by in the ‘30s.”

Q: “Les, what was Sandpoint like in those days?”

Les: “Lumberjacks would come to town and do a little gambling and they would visit the girls upstairs in some of the places but they never bothered anybody. They were good men, most of them, and a lot of them were well educated.

They came from good families in the east and most of them were single men and they would go to a camp and many would stay there all winter.

Gambling was supposed to be illegal but there was poker all the time and Sandpoint was full of slot machines. It was good then because a kid or a woman could walk down the street day or night and nobody bothered them and now it's not that way.”

Q: “What was it like being a kid then?”

Les: “Well, we kids used to always have guns, rifles and 22's, but we didn't go around shooting people. We would always go to the powwows at night when the Indians were in town. They danced, gambled, had their stick games and there were no problems. They moved the powwows to where the LP (Louisiana Pacific - no longer standing) mill is today at the ball diamond but they just faded away around 1929-1930. The Indians would come from Canada, Oregon, and Montana in buggies. We kids would go down there and goof around.”

Les stated, “We were all poor but we had fun, had friends, and money didn't make that much difference. For toys we made stilts and tractors out of spools that thread came on. We used to go down to the Scenic Theater and watch a show for a dime. It was located about where the Pastime Café (no longer in business) is now. It was a good place to grow up-the winters were long and tough but it was good.”

Q: “When did you get married?”

Les: “Redena and I were married in Missoula and went on a trip down through Colorado. I took a week off from work at the planing mill in Dover.

“My wife was with the library 20 years and was with the high school six years before that. That was when the library was in City Hall. She helped move the library when they took over the old post office on Second Avenue. Redena moved with her family from Nebraska during the dust bowl days.”

At the close of the interview, Les took Redena's hand and said, “Our folks picked the best place in the world for us to live.”