Lone Fir schoolhouse restored to splendor

The historic Lone Fir schoolhouse last week again rang with the sound of children learning after nearly four decades of vacancy and deterioration.

Jennifer Johnson, owner of Jennifer’s Greenacres Auto Sales, is responsible for the one-room building’s restoration. She acquired the schoolhouse when she bought the property at Sprague Avenue and Progress Road in 2007 and began fixing it up last year. A tarp covered the leaking roof, animals had set up residence, and wood was rotting.

“I could not see it rot away,” Johnson said. “It was really crumbling.”

The schoolhouse was built in 1894 in the Saltese Meadows area. It was moved in late 1904 and used as a kindergarten classroom for the Central Valley School District until the late 1960s or early ’70s. Similar buildings once dotted Spokane Valley, but Lone Fir is the last of its kind.

Employee Steve Putnam devoted himself to the repair project and did all the carpentry work. He did research on one-room schoolhouses and found that they all had five windows facing east and one door facing north. “Someone had hacked in a (second) door, and I converted it back to a window,” he said.

The window frames are original, but some broken glass had to be replaced with single-pane glass made to match what was there. The roof was replaced and the front door rebuilt. Old siding was ripped off, revealing the original cedar siding underneath. Now the freshly painted building shines in the sun.

Inside, there is an entry room with original shelves and cabinets, plus reproduction coat hooks on the wall. A tiny washroom holds a basin and a pitcher of water. The outhouse isn’t a working model, but it’s the original that used to sit next to the schoolhouse. Johnson found it in a neighbor’s yard.

“I worked on this for probably six months,” Putnam said.

Johnson said she was happy to open up the school for two fourth-grade classes from Progress Elementary. A teacher contacted her to ask for a tour, and Johnson offered to let them use it for two days. Some of the students dressed in period clothing, and they had a spelling bee, recited poems and held classes. In fourth-grade history, students learn about pioneer history, said teacher Rozanne Caruso. “They’ve been studying about one-room schoolhouses for two weeks,” she said. “They were so excited.”

Nina Culver

Anti-meth ads put shock-value to use

The signs of methamphetamine use are all over North Idaho. Now, thanks to an ad campaign aimed at Idaho’s youth and young adults, signs tied to the chemical concoction are more obvious than ever.

The cracked and decaying teeth. The weeping sores and sunken cheeks. The devastated families and sense of hopelessness.

The message from the Idaho Meth Project is simple: Not even once.

Through graphic advertisements that portray in unnerving detail the horrid costs of using the homemade drug, the group hopes to reduce first-time meth use from the Panhandle to the southern plateaus.

The Idaho Meth Project is a wide-scale prevention program featuring public service messages, public policy and various community outreach initiatives. Since the project was founded in Montana by billionaire businessman Thomas Siebel in 2005, organizations have sprung up in half a dozen states including Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and Hawaii.

Megan Ronk, executive director of Idaho’s Boise-based campaign, said their goal is to reach – even inundate – the public before it’s too late. The hard-hitting imagery is based on years of research, with several thousand people interviewed in annual surveys that track the project’s impact.

Jacob Livingston