The Ragged Edge Crossing Boundary Government Interference Uproots A Cherished Way Of Like In Idaho’s Northernmost County

Frustration settles on Boundary County like sawdust on a woodsman’s boot.

It blankets farmers and businessmen, surveyors and barbers, builders and loggers.

Talk to Sam Fodge.

Last year the independent sawmill owner opened a mill to make wood chips out of timber waste. It kept loggers in work during layoffs at two corporate sawmills.

Today Fodge is scowling.

From his seat near Beauty’s cafe window, he stabs a finger toward a truckload of wood chips rolling in from Canada, 23 miles away. The North American Free Trade Agreement, he says, eases these imports while he struggles to make the same product.

“It’s like our government sold us out,” says Fodge, 41. “I remember hearing about ‘one-world government’ when I was in the service. It was just a rumor then, but I think we’re headed there now.”

Twenty-five years ago Boundary County was a quiet, stable farming-and-timber outpost, free of most rules, not burdened by much outside interference.

Today, the simple life is shrouded in conflict, fear and uncertainty.

“Boundary County has a lifestyle that’s been operating for years, but the rest of the country says it doesn’t work any longer,” says Bonners Ferry attorney Pete Wilson.

Laws crafted thousands of miles away to protect grizzly bear, caribou and sturgeon threaten loggers and mill workers. Trade rules negotiated by heads of state put farmers and woodsmen on the defensive.

Residents squabble over new zoning rules to manage growth.

The community also battles an outlaw image sparked by the Aryan Nations church to the south, the Militia of Montana to the east and high-profile scofflaws at home.

Randy Weaver’s 1992 battle with federal agents marked Boundary County coast to coast as the apex of anti-government activism - a reputation most here consider unfair.

All these circumstances conspire to rob this rugged, rural community of what it desires most - independence and solitude.

A cherished lifestyle

Notched between Canada, the Evergreen State and The Last Best Place, Boundary County has fewer than 10,000 residents.

Bonners Ferry - the county seat - has no fast-food chains or shopping malls, and only three lawyers. A downtown pawn shop specializes in guns and bicycles. Four hardware stores battle for customers in a three-block area.

Three main veins connect it to the rest of the world: The Burlington-Northern railroad line; U.S. Highway 95, stretching from Boise to Canada; and U.S. Highway 2, running east into Montana.

The county is home to cattle ranches, nurseries, hops farms and a failing hog industry. Loggers and mill workers account for less than 15 percent of the work force, but their high wages drive the economy.

Other high-paying jobs are rare as foreign cars. Per capita income in 1993 was $6.52 an hour - the lowest in North Idaho and 65 percent of the national rate.

Many residents grow their food and school their children at home. Dozens rely on drinking water from a coin-operated pump outside City Hall. More than 1.2 million gallons were sold that way last year.

It’s a lifestyle most can’t imagine giving up.

Larry Boatman, a Crown Pacific sawmill worker, moved here with his parents in the 1950s and spent nearly 20 years working in mills.

Now 40, he predicts government red tape, environmental appeals and Canadian imports will wipe out his employer.

“Most of my friends either work in mills or are in logging,” he says. “Everybody’s struggling.”

His job pays $28,000 a year - nearly twice the county average.

Fearing a mill closing will crash the real estate market, Boatman sold his split-level home with its 30-year mortgage - just in case. He bought a tiny fixer-upper he’ll pay off next year.

“People here are angry, very angry,” he says. “People are starting to get backed into the corner. They see their way of life threatened.”

Beneath the anger are patriotic roots.

Bonners Ferry once boasted of having 500 members in the American Legion.

Old-timers recall December 1941, when the county had 60 servicemen at sea. Restless locals worried until learning the men were miles from Pearl Harbor.

Politics are as diverse as the landscape.

Democrats traditionally reign but Republicans currently hold major offices. Supporters of freshman U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth are fiercely loyal, though she won this county by only 241 votes out of 3,169.

About 30 people fight globalism through membership in the John Birch Society. The county also is home to some 300 apolitical Mennonites, who don’t believe in war.

A few rebellious souls are sprinkled throughout the county.

Bill Blume, 63, once lost a court battle over whether he should have to register with the state as a barber.

“Bill’s like the rest of us here,” friend Mike Oxford says. “You get your back up and you ain’t moving from that position, right or wrong.”

And most residents are disillusioned with bureaucracy, attorney Wilson says.

“There’s no longer a sense of knowing who is the servant and who is the master.”

Government’s long reach

Government horror stories are as common here as “No Trespassing” signs.

Kevin Lederhos makes his living turning military helicopters into logging choppers. Customs workers recently stalled delivery of his imported parts for a week, then sent him a bill for the surprise inspection: $5,700.

Vivian Irwin’s flower bed was plucked by federal drug agents who found it had been infiltrated by wild opium poppies. She had no idea her flowers were illegal.

Surveyor Art High owned a nuclear densometer - a machine that uses radioactive waves to measure soil depth. When he bought it more than five years ago, he says, the state regulated its use.

Since then, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission took over and demanded $3,000 a year in fees.

“I only did about $500 in business a year with it,” High says.

The government’s hand here reaches far beyond regulation. Nearly 70 percent of the county is federal land. Government is among the largest employers.

Nearly a quarter of the county’s residents collect some form of welfare - “our dirty little secret,” one resident says.

In 1993, the county tried swatting aside a federal fist: Commissioners passed a law demanding the feds seek county approval to manage government lands.

Dozens of such county-supremacy ordinances surfaced in the West about the same time. Here, it was never enforced, and forest rangers say they saw no resistance to federal rule.

But Boundary County’s version was the first tested in court. Commissioners lost, and the skirmish furthered a rebellious image.

One the front pages

Misfortune seems to crash in on Boundary County.

Through most of its history, the Kootenai River flooded or threatened to each spring, turning Bonners Ferry streets to streams.

In 1975, the Libby Dam was built upstream. Business owners at last could pave the roads and carpet the floors.

“We used to joke about what we needed to do to keep Boundary County off the front pages,” says attorney Wilson.

Then Christopher Boyce moved in.

At 26, the California golden boy-turned-spy had been serving a 40-year prison sentence for selling secrets to the Soviets. He escaped in 1980.

Where better to hide than remote Boundary County?

Boyce grew a beard and holed up in a cabin east of Bonners Ferry. It became the staging area for a series of Northwest bank robberies.

He was caught months later in western Washington, but the media zeroed in on Boundary County.

“When you read bad things like that you don’t feel good,” Wilson says.

Other fugitives have found this outland.

Claude Dallas, who killed two Idaho game wardens, passed through briefly on his way to Canada.

Robert Adams, wanted in Canada for sexual assault, fraud and theft, died in a medical helicopter crash following a border shootout in 1989.

Then there was Randy Weaver, a blustery, white separatist from Iowa. Many people grew to dislike him, but Boundary County manners demand tolerance. He got 102 votes in a 1988 bid for sheriff.

When word spread that federal agents had surrounded Weaver’s Ruby Ridge cabin, few were surprised.

“People thought ‘He must be a bad guy if they have all those resources after him”’ says Bonners Ferry City Councilman Darrell Kerby.

Some residents were unnerved after learning the dispute boiled down to a missed court appearance for selling a sawed-off shotgun. The killings of Weaver’s wife and son enraged them.

Phil Davis, a 30-year resident and logger recalls the rebellious seeds planted by the federal siege of Ruby Ridge.

Davis, 55, and a search and rescue leader was called to Ruby Ridge to help authorities end the bout. He saw the helicopters, the armed guards, the firepower.

“I was dumb until that time,” Davis says. “Then I started adding things up and it scared me.”

He had seen the annoying government barriers that block forest roads to protect bears and caribou. Suddenly, he understood.

“The gates? I know why they do that now - they want control,” Davis says.

These days he wears a ball cap that reads “Tactical Unit, BATF, Waco, Texas” and is riddled with fake bullet holes. Citizen militias, he says, have become necessary.

“Militias are put together to help people,” he says. “They may be our last hope.”

Limited alternatives

Hope and resignation are locked in a duel for Boundary County’s future.

Last spring’s temporary layoffs at the Louisiana Pacific and Crown Pacific mills served as a warning, says U.S. Forest Service ranger Debbie Norton.

Building slowed. Shoppers cut back. “Everyone got cautious,” she says.

University of Idaho researchers are studying how the county would survive a permanent shutdown of either mill. The L-P mill employs 130. Crown Pacific employs 126.

Alternatives are limited, says researcher Aaron Harp. Bonners Ferry could draw more tourists, he says, but there’s little hope of becoming a destination resort.

Norton doesn’t expect residents to move. Some will stay and grumble, she predicts, others will get creative.

One logger already turned in his chainsaw and now sells pellet stoves.

Pig farmer H.C. Studer went broke last year and is thinking of selling his land to developers. “The value has tripled in 25 years.”

Some expect Chenoweth and a Republican Congress to save the timber industry by rolling back environmental regulations.

If that doesn’t happen, Boundary County will just adapt.

Boatman already has. He’ll soon be debt-free in his new home.

“It’s not going to get better before it gets worse,” he says. “If I lose my job, I’ll probably go to truck-driving school.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 10 Color Photos Graphic: Boundary County

MEMO: 3 Sidebars appeared with story:

1. Controversy returned to mountain retreat Long before Randy Weaver made Ruby Ridge a symbol of government oppression, a Bonners Ferry developer was feuding with Boundary County. County commissioners sued the developer in 1982, claiming his new subdivision deep in the rugged Selkirks was illegal. The county won in court. But the skirmish was one of a handful that angered voters fearful of over-regulation. New commissioners later took office and zoning enforcement went, for a while at least, the way of the Dodo. “Some who had the position after me made it a caretaker’s job,” said Wayne Fox, the county’s sole planner at the time of the land dispute. The controversial subdivision’s location? Ruby Ridge.

2. States’ rights the real issue Darel Cupp was eager to strike a blow against “the socialist state” and rising property taxes. But the Bonners Ferry man balked during a recent vote on a $14.7 million school bond issue when pollsters asked him to sign an affidavit. The affidavit - common at voting booths - asked him to swear he hadn’t already cast a ballot and to acknowledge he was a U.S. citizen. The former he accepted; the latter enraged him. “I’m not a resident of the corporate United States,” Cupp seethes. “I’m a resident of the sovereign state of Idaho. “I said, ‘Isn’t that unconstitutional? By what authority do you deny me my right to vote?”’ Later, the county clerk showed him the law requiring the affidavit. “To this day, I have not voted and don’t know if I ever shall.”

3. Tax revolt frustrates local decisions Steven Brace’s version of tax rebellion is frustrating plans for a new fire station in Post Falls. The dispute is over a state-owned, five-acre pheasant farm off Seltice Way along Interstate 90. Idaho’s Fish and Game Department agreed in 1993 to sell it to the Post Falls Fire District for $146,000. Then Brace stepped in. Though he has no financial interest in the property, he filed complicated documents with the county, attempting to transfer the land to himself. The result is a blemish on the land title that the state is still trying to erase. Brace argues the sale violates Idaho’s state constitution, which reads: “The making of profit, directly or indirectly, out of state, county, city, town, township, or school district money…shall be deemed a felony.” The state is profiting by selling land that taxpayers paid far less for years ago, Brace says. “Now we buy it again? That’s fraud.” An annoyed Deputy Attorney General Dallas Burkhart suspects the constitution refers to “individuals, like a mayor, profiting from public property.” Fire Commissioner Joe Venishnick complains Brace is wasting public money, not saving it. “We’re two years behind with a fire station because we don’t own the property.”