Now Next Generation Cares For Homestead

Like her parents before her, Jean Maucieri loves and respects the land.

In 1910, Jean’s newlywed parents, Hazel and Burt Selby, came west from North Dakota. They lived on the quarter section near Lake Coeur d’Alene that Burt selected after winning the right in a drawing when the government opened up reservation land to homesteading.

In later years, Jean says her father was uncomfortable with the taking of the land from the reservation but he didn’t think too much about it at the time, because everyone was doing it.

Her mother and father spent that first year sawing and hammering to build a tiny cabin while living in a tent near O’Gara Creek, which ran cold year around. They also became friends with other early settlers such as Burt Conkling and Annie O’Gara, whose original homesteads still carry their names - Conkling Park and O’Gara Bay.

The Selbys also arrived in time for Burt to help fight the raging fires of late summer that exploded over thousands of acres in the Panhandle and western Rockies in 1910.

“Unfortunately, my parents found they could not earn a living on their land and finally left it. My father had a degree in law, but they moved to Argentina where he went to work for the International Harvester Co., setting up binders in the wheatland. Later they moved to the Midwest, where my sister and I grew up.”

But the Selbys never forgot their homestead, nor did they sell it as did so many. The family returned every summer and Jean recalls riding the lake steamers as a child and staying at the Conkling Park Hotel with its fine dining room. There also was a dance hall that drew loggers and miners.

“My parents hated to log but they did it. They had to in order to pay for the property.” She adds, “This, unfortunately, is what happens in a lot of cases today. People acquire large pieces of land and find themselves strapped financially. Then they end up virtually stripping the trees to pay for it.”

Jean, like her parents, returns every spring and remains until November in the modest, rustic home her parents built overlooking O’Gara Bay. Jean and her husband, Jack, who died last March, made the annual trip from their Los Angeles home to enjoy North Idaho and its people and work together to manage the land in a way they hoped would benefit both the land and its forests. They never expected to make money from it, nor does Jean now.

“A little, maybe, but most of it has gone back to improve the forests and bring them to a healthy condition,” she says.

About 17 years ago Jean and Jack selectively logged some of the property in order to get rid of underbrush and diseased trees and open up the forest to sunlight. They also needed access to use its resources for betterment.

“This is what we always saw as the real meaning of sustained management. I think more people are coming around to this point of view,” she said.

, DataTimes MEMO: Jeri McCroskey, a free-lance writer and antique collector, lives with her husband at Carlin Bay. Panhandle Pieces is shared among several North Idaho writers.