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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

And Now Dynamite Town Name? Some Say Smelterville ‘Sooty,’ But Old-Timers Call Bid Snooty

Bekka Rauve Correspondent

A fair number of Silver Valley residents still aren’t done mourning the Bunker Hill stacks, dynamited to their graves on May 26.

But change is in the air, and today in Smelterville, residents will be stopping by City Hall between 3 and 6 p.m. to indicate whether they favor a name change.

To many, the split opinion boils down to the difference between old-timers and newcomers.

“The new people don’t know what went on. They don’t have any roots here,” said Esther Stancik, 69, whose husband worked at the Bunker Hill smelter for 32 years.

“It used to be called Mud Flats - maybe they’d prefer that,” said Bill Noyen, 81, a former Shoshone County Commissioner and owner of Smelterville’s only grocery store, the Wayside Market. “I think…we should stay Smelterville.”

Noyen claims that most of his customers agree with him. And all of Stancik’s neighbors, who have lived in their homes between 20 and 50 years, contend that the name Smelterville is just fine.

But Don Rumpel, 67, one of the driving forces behind the push for a name change, strongly disagrees.

“I feel the name has a sooty connotation to out-of-the-area people,” he said.

As a board member of the Silver Valley Economic Development Corp. and owner of Kellogg Plastics (located in Smelterville), Rumpel is aware that Smelterville property values are 30 percent lower than elsewhere in the Silver Valley. He feels that devaluation is linked directly to the town’s name.

Only Smelterville property owners who are registered to vote in Shoshone County may express an opinion in today’s poll.

That means Rumpel, who has never lived in Smelterville, can have a say. But J.C. Marshall, the other Smelterville business owner who has strongly lobbied for the name change, can’t. He lives in Cataldo. As a resident of Kootenai County, he can’t vote in Shoshone.

The stipulations have baffled some residents and irritated others.

“People who don’t even live here are able to vote. That’s not right,” Noyen said.

A legal name change would require a vote by the city council for an amendment of the city charter, he said.

All the city council wants to know is what people think, according to council chairman Bill Keller, 32, who has lived in Smelterville all his life.

He said the limitations were designed to make sure that the people expressing an opinion were the ones paying taxes toward the town’s upkeep and development.

, DataTimes