The Town That Time Forgot

We were meandering down a county road on a lush and sunny Sunday morning. Having spent the night in a trucker's motel in St. Marie (people who live there pronounce it "Saint Mary"), we were making our way slowly into central Idaho. 

We rounded a corner, descending a small hill into what looked like a deserted little  town. My friend, Steve, pointed to a small gray building just off the road, about 10' x 12'. A sign said "Bovill Jailhouse--1910." Small weeds grew up around the abandoned hoosegow. I stopped to take a picture, trying to imagine who, if anyone, had ever been incarcerated there, and for what. We found out a few minutes later. As I was returning to our van, I encountered a man coming from the town's only market. He was carrying a can of soda. I said, "Good morning," and asked if he'd lived here long.

"Lived here most of my life so far," Gary Loomis said. He seemed pleased to stop and talk with us, and he was certainly friendly. "I came here at age 9, in 1948. Moved from Seattle when my father got a job here. He was from here."

Gary told Steve and me a lot about the town's history. "It's 100 years old. We're  celebrating our Centennial in a couple a weeks. About 300 people live here now. Not many young people anymore. Town's had its troubles, believe you me. We got a mayor's been accused of child pornography. Trouble is, he fiddled with the taxes, foreclosed on a lot of places, bought most of the buildings and land around here when the owners defaulted on taxes. Bought them as distresses. Now he owns most of the town. Hard to vote him out.

"Bovill used to be a busy place. Town center was busy on Saturday nights then. Should have seen it. Truckers and loggers filled it up, got drunk, fought. Town siren blew at 9PM, all us kids lit out for home, otherwise the sheriff would arrest you. Even had a theater here. Then it got turned into some kind of museum. Then it just closed up. I hear there's plans to open the theater again." Gary told us that J.R. Simplot (the man who made a fortune growing, processing and selling Idaho potatoes to McDonald's Ray Kroc) used to have a big silica mine in Bovill, and that Potlatch had for years a major logging operation. "Town thrived in the 40s & 50s when JRSimplot and Potlatch were here," Gary said. "Simplot was running a silica mill for glass manufacturing before he got into the potato business, and Potlatch grew from its logging operations into making pulp and paper and plywood. I worked on many log drives. Big horses (Percherons? Steve suggested) would drag the 1,000-plus pound logs to the river to float them downstream. 'Course that's gone now. They've gone and dammed up the river. But we were pretty busy skidding the logs by horse and decking the logs on landings, waiting for river to flow.

"I went to school in Bovill," Gary said. "School used to be good-sized then. Not so much now. We have a school, but it's pretty small. Big house up on the hill there used to be a rooming house for the itinerant workers who'd come for the logging. It was empty for some time. Now I understand some family from somewhere else bought it and is fixing it up to live there all by themselves."

Since there didn't seem to be anything in business -- the gas station, the hotel, the  theater, the other market, the newspaper -- I asked Gary where people shopped. "They get their groceries in Moscow, at least a half-hour away. Not much here any more."

The dilapidated-looking building shown above is the former theater (later museum), and the man standing beside it is Greg Hall, son of the mayor. ("Young Greg runs most of his old man's businesses these days," Gary told us. "His father is pretty old, has some kind of disease as I understand." As we happened by on this particular Sunday morning, Greg Hall was opening the building to check on the condition inside. I asked him about it. "Inside's pretty much OK, roof needs fixing," he said, but he didn't want to stand around and talk. We drove further up the street, and were surprised to find more than two dozen nice little frame, single-storey houses, each with neatly trimmed yards, and lots of lawn ornaments. (No flamingos, though.) And most of the families had late-model cars.

Not being used to such small places, I was surprised to find that Bovill had its own post office. "Oh yeah," Gary said. "We got the mail here, just one fella works here now, other stuff that's essentials. Some people like to make their home here, commute to Moscow and other places. It's peaceful here these days. Quiet."

After we had talked nearly half an hour, Gary said he had to get home (a house about 100 years up the street). "Wife'll be waking up. She sleeps late Sundays."

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Comments

[Steve Wilson]

This is a superbly detailed and accurate recounting of these conversations. I know. I was there. Well done Kent.

Steve