Kootenai prepares for 100th birthday

KOOTENAI — The reminders are out there somewhere, in a grassy field along the railroad right of way, and on the plat map at city hall.

Either way, it takes some digging, or a keen eye to find them.

With an index finger Mary Luzmoor, Kootenai’s clerk and treasurer, circles a spot on the city map.

The spot is located a block north and east of the tiny city hall on a street called Main, although the casual passerby would not know it, because the street has little of the trappings of a central thoroughfare.

There are no false-front buildings on Main Street, or businesses usually associated with a main drag.

“It has been re-platted,” Luzmoor said. “But, this is where the town square was.”

Formed when the Northern Pacific Railroad built a division point, and Humbird Lumber established a mill here in 1908, Kootenai was established a incorporated in 1910.

The town celebrates its centennial this summer and a committee is in the process of gathering old photographs to be displayed at the celebration.

In its glory days in the first part of last century, the intersection and its surroundings was home to a hotel, bank and its share of saloons.

“It’s all residential now,” Luzmoor said.

The small homes on neat lots that surround the intersection of Main and Central belie its former grandeur.

When Eric Brubaker lived in a home on the former site of the city’s bank, he often found bricks from the old building as he expanded a garden spot to accommodate peas and corn.

“Peas, hot peppers, tomatoes, herbs,” Brubaker said. “You couldn’t break the surface of the soil without hitting bricks.”

Brubaker, a Kootenai city council member who works as a planner for neighboring Ponderay, piled the bricks and used them to landscape his property.

“I always kept hoping I would find a vault or some gold coins,” he said. “But that didn’t happen.”

Instead he found bricks. Lots of them. They are from the bank or the hotel, according to the old photographs he has seen.

When he sold the house, the new owners asked if they could keep the piles of bricks, he said.

“They are pretty rustic,” he said.

Mayor Maggie Mjelde said the city plans an all-day centennial celebration, July 24, and hopes that the centennial committee will have gathered by then not just a slew of old pictures, but also a plethora of stories from the old time.

“We want people who used to live in Kootenai, parents of people who used to live in Kootenai, or anyone who has stories,” Mjelde said. “We want them.”

The stories, hand-written, typed, or emails can be sent to city hall. People can also stop by and tell  what they know.

“There is a lot of history in Kootenai,” she said. “It is one of the oldest towns in the area.

“We don’t want to skip the hard-working people who settled our city.”

Anyone with stories or pictures can call city hall at (208) 265-2431.