Tractor back in limelight

A Blanchard, Idaho, icon is coming home.

The circa 1887 steam tractor had been forgotten by almost everyone, left in the basement of the Riverfront Park Pavilion in Spokane.

It was owned for generations by the Poirier family and used for everything from running equipment to roll oats and thresh hay to working machinery to make shingles and move a house, said Fielden “Sonny” Poirier.

Poirier, 78, has been keeping track of his family’s tractor for years.

Every year, he’d call Riverfront Park about it. And every year he was told that a better time to move the tractor would be if and when the Pavilion was renovated.

But he wasn’t going to take no for an answer in 2004.

“The community wants it back,” he said.

Some Blanchard residents have talked about building a museumlike facility to house the tractor.

In 1978, the family loaned the tractor to the city of Spokane for a two-year starring role in the Riverfront Park history exhibit “The Spokane Story.”

But then the Poirier steam tractor went from its workhorse beginnings to 25 years of idleness, sitting alone in the dark exhibit space, out of public view.

Park employees would have liked to return the tractor to its owner, but it was simply too big to get out the door, Riverfront Park Manager Craig Butz said.

The exhibit and basement had been built around it.

But at Poirier’s insistence, the 12-ton steam tractor is coming back to Blanchard.

On Tuesday, workers used a crane to extricate the tractor from its basement storage and deposit it on a flatbed truck.

The first attempt was halted after dirt began tumbling into the large pit holding the tractor. But a second attempt, made after the crane was moved farther away from the hole, went off without any problems.

Work to return the tractor to Blanchard began earlier this year when Riverfront Park staff members began investigating the procedure and cost, Butz said.

They were lucky to find a contractor willing to do the job for about $15,000 – about half other estimates, he said.

The Parks Department asked to buy the tractor for the $15,000 price, but it was turned down. The tractor’s value is estimated at between $30,000 and $100,000.

Physical work began last week, when crews dug a large pit outside the Pavilion to reach the basement level. A hole was then cut in the concrete wall so that the tractor could be rolled through.

Several trees were removed to make way for the equipment. And crews had to be careful not to disturb an old steam heat pipe running just over a portion of the pit. It may or may not carry a gas line.

“There’s always so much stuff buried in the park. You never know what you’re going to find,” Spokane Parks operations director Taylor Bressler said.

Now Poirier said he’s hoping for great-grandchildren to show off the tractor to in the coming years. He’d like to get the machine up and running.

“To start with, we’re going to put it in our machine shed. But if (Blanchard) builds a building for it, we’ll have it on permanent display,” he said.