Few Milltown homes remain in area

(Recently, I took a drive out to Lincoln School to check on the progress of the new Super 1 store being constructed on the site of the old Humbird Milltown. While there, I recalled the many stories I had heard from Dale Selle, Charlene Fitzpatrick, Shirley Wendle, Bob Deubel, Linda Rosholt, and many others about living in the town Humbird built — Mill-town.  Today, I want to share with you their story about the place they called home.)

In 1904, the city school district built a two-room schoolhouse on a tract of land within the block bounded by Boyer Avenue on the east, Forest Avenue on the west, Spruce Street on the south, and Chestnut Street on the north.

This school, called Walker School, was on the west edge of Milltown and served the Milltown children. In 1908, the school district purchased the remainder of this block from the Humbird Lumber Company for $600 and built a new two-story brick building with multiple classrooms. The new school was called Humbird School but in 1915, the name was changed to Lincoln School.

A large ballfield was constructed on Milltown property across from the school in the area where the new Super 1 store is located. It was called Humbird Field and was the site of many spirited baseball games and high school football games.

The typical Sandpoint Milltown house, built to accommodate a mill worker and his family, was a two-story frame structure 18 feet wide and 22 feet deep (396 square feet on each floor).

The house was sheeted on the outside with shiplap lumber and finished on the inside with lath and plaster. There was no insulation and the houses tended to be cold in the winter and hot in the summer.

A brick chimney ran up through the center of the house. A narrow, steep, stairway ran along one wall and led to the two large bedrooms upstairs. A wooden door, connected to a spring to assure that it would remain closed, sealed the stairway off from the living room so that heat from the wood burning stove in the living room was not lost up the stairwell.

Most of the original Mill¬town houses had a one-story addition, 10 feet by 20 feet, attached along one side. This attachment, with its sloped shed-roof and metal stove¬pipe sticking out, served as a kitchen.

Cooking was done on a wood burning range. There was a pantry with a door in the corner of the kitchen where food, usually home canned from the garden and orchard, was stored.

An icebox sat on the utility porch where milk, butter, and other perish¬able foods were kept cold by blocks of ice delivered by the iceman.

The houses had electricity and running water, but they did not have indoor toilets. There was an outhouse or privy located somewhere behind each house.

The Milltown houses had shingles on their roofs; shingles sawed at the Humbird shingle mill. Most of the original Milltown houses were painted white.

As time wore on and the houses were repainted, many of them were painted brick red with white trim.

These houses did not have solid foundations and, as they settled, the plaster on the walls cracked. Sometimes, during a blizzard, a fine powder of snow would drift through these cracks into the houses.

As the kitchen additions deteriorated, most of them were removed and the floor plans changed. The downstairs bedroom became the kitchen and the cook stove, and the heater stove, was back-to-back against the chimney flue.

In the early 1930s, the Humbird Lumber Company closed their mill in Sandpoint. The Milltown houses, and lots, were sold to private parties for about $300 to $350 each. At that time, some of the mill houses were less than a desirable place to live because they were in disrepair and some were badly infested with bedbugs. The personal hygiene of the bachelor mill worker had not been the greatest. However, it was cheap housing and money was scarce during the Great Depression.

When Milltown became part of the city of Sandpoint, the street names and house numbers were changed. Maple Avenue and what had been Howard Avenue (North Sixth Avenue), were eventually vacated to make room for a new, locally owned, sawmill. Gradually, the old Milltown houses demolished and they were replaced by various businesses. Today, only a few of the old “bosses” houses still stand along Larch Street.