Christina Crawford She Hopes To Make A Go Of Rural Idaho B&B;/Retreat

In this tiny town of about 100 people there are no flashy Hollywood lights to remind Christina Crawford of city life in Southern California.

Crawford, daughter of the late actress Joan Crawford and author of one of the most famous memoirs of Hollywood children, “Mommie Dearest,” has moved to this small town to be her own boss.

The site, about 20 miles north of Moscow, is remote, yet, for her, close enough to Spokane and the airport.

There’s no gilt and glamour. No showbiz politics or press conferences. Just a sleepy little town south of Tensed, with a chance for her to make a living.

After three years of searching for a place in the Northwest, Crawford, 58, in 1992 bought the 166-acre farm and named it Seven Springs (for the number of natural springs on the land). She moved here from Washington, D.C., after working on the 1992 Clinton election campaign.

The farm “keeps me busy,” Crawford says. “There’s a lot to be done.”

She maintains seven different business licenses, cooks meals, maintains 45 head of cattle, tends a garden and continues her writing, fiction and non-fiction - she has published four books.

And she maintains this very full schedule recovering from a stroke which has left her right side paralyzed.

“This is an enormous challenge,” she said. “There’s lots of physical work to do. But I’m quite pleased with it. Most people don’t know by looking at me that there was anything wrong.”

She said the stroke forced her to rethink her lifestyle of speaking circuits and acting.

Most of her life she has been independent with a will to work hard, Crawford says.

At age 10 she went to boarding school. At age 16 she was graduated from high school and by 17 she was supporting herself as an actress in Broadway shows. She had no trust fund or inheritance from her mother’s Hollywood success.

She’s heard the stereotypes about Hollywood children.

“Really and truly, I’ve had to provide for myself since I was 17 years old,” she says.

She designed her round inn, which is also her home, “with a piece of graph paper and a ruler.”

Continuing a lifelong interest in politics, Crawford ran for Benewah County Commissioner last fall, but lost the Democratic primary. Now she serves as a district supervisor for the Benewah Soil and Water Conservation District.

Meanwhile, she’s using her farm as part of a federally funded project studying organic farming.

Hard work and flexibility are keys to her business approach, she says.

When she first opened her five-unit bed and breakfast in 1992, she discovered many customers wanted dinner, so she redid her business plan, applied for more licenses and changed to a country inn.

She tried marketing her inn regionally, by advertising in Moscow and Pullman, but found most customers weren’t thinking of driving out to the country to stay overnight. Sanders, Idaho, has no destination attraction, other than its rural nature.

So, Crawford began marketing her inn as a retreat for businesses and a place for large parties.

“You must take the longer view, you can’t go quarter by quarter,” she says. “When you start a new business, be prepared to last five years. That’s why a lot of businesses fail. They can’t attract new customers or adjust.”

Crawford’s concept shows the American spirit of entrepreneurship, says Don Harter, professor emeritus of agriculture at the University of Idaho. Attracting American customers to a rural setting is difficult, he says.

Harter, who has studied bed and breakfasts in England, says Americans, in general, don’t travel to the countryside to enjoy nature.

“In Idaho, the bed and breakfast doesn’t work as a destination. It’s used as an alternative to a motel at a spot that would attract tourists,” he says.

For Crawford to succeed, she had to create a niche and a speciality bed and breakfast that caters to retreats.

“She works with her hands as much as her head,” Harter says, noting that half of all small businesses fail within the first two years.

If rural communities work together, government begins looking at ways to help small business owners, more people will stay in rural America and keep it alive, Crawford says.

“A lot of people like to live in rural America. We need to find ways so everyone isn’t forced to live in the city to have ability to make a living.”

She’s still waiting for her investment to start paying off. “It takes five years to begin to see it,” she says. “This year is the fourth.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo