Staking A New Claim Couple Having Old Burke Houses Restored, And Uncovering Family History
Margo Linscott inherited four houses with leaking roofs, shifting foundations and broken beams.
They sit side-by-side in a forested canyon where time and 10-foot snows take a heavy toll. Burke Canyon is long on mining lore but short on any kind of sprucing up.
Still, Linscott and her husband, Ivan, didn’t abandon the houses. Those cracking walls encased a century of family history.
The couple’s incentive may be best explained by words penciled on wall panels by Margo’s grandfather:
“This house was built by Frank Richardson, fall of 1905, finished in spring of 1906. Married Dollie Ives in spring of 1903.” Another note reads: “Jan. 12 1906. 1st dinner in new house.”
The notes were uncovered during remodeling. The work is being done by Doug Collins and Tammy Shabazian, who live nearby and restored an old mining company house of their own.
“They’ve lovingly pulled this back from the hibernation it’s been in for 100 years,” Ivan Linscott said Sunday.
He described the joy of watching wood-grained history emerge from under lowered ceilings and glued-down carpet. “There was this kind of laminated catastrophe.”
The Linscotts live in California. He’s a researcher in Stanford University’s space telecommunications lab. She’s an electron microscopist, using what she calls “very expensive toys” to look for defects in computer wafers.
In regular visits to the Silver Valley over the last four years, they’ve watched the transformation of three of the four houses.
Some of the work has been mundane but critical. New beams supplement the piled-rock foundations. A drainfield has eliminated sewage pipes that led to Canyon Creek.
It was much more fun seeing a footed bathtub gleamingly restored to match black-and-white tiles.
Fifty Richardson descendants gathered for a reunion this past weekend. Some folks stayed in the houses, which are wedged between Burke Canyon Road and the burbling creek.
Frank Richardson and his brother, Fred, originally built 14 houses. That brought in rental income during the years when mining boomed.
Frank was a pharmacist. All that remains of his Burke Drug Store is a sign. It hangs in the kitchen where his daughter, Mildred Jones, fed three children: Margo, Fred and Reva.
Fred Jones lives in Missoula. He owns the tools that were used to build these houses.
Reva, now Reva Hess of Worley, is a teacher. So was her mother, who was born in the same house where she died seven years ago. Hess stepped through its front door on Sunday and recalled books, paintings, rock collections and a big player piano.
“This was our growing-up house. It had my dad’s paintings all over the walls,” she said. “He went to the Chicago Art Institute.”
Sid Jones worked as a mine electrician until lung disease forced him above ground. Then he maintained local school buildings, and drove school buses.
The Jones house is partly restored. A hallway and laundry room links it to the Richardson house.
This is where the grandparents lived. It is now a decorator’s delight of wainscoting and polished wood. There’s a new second bathroom upstairs. The living room is warmed by a modern wood stove, its hearth made of matching rocks plucked from a landslide.
Another landslide, this one just across the road, provided more rocks. Those line a kitchen wall in the third house, known as the cabin.
The cabin’s exterior is unpainted. Inside, it’s brightly refurbished. A bedroom overlooks the creek and is fancy enough to be dubbed the honeymoon suite.
The fourth, unpainted building shows just how far the others have come. Plaster walls are crumbling. Old orange carpet, a toilet bowl and other construction debris litter the rooms.
It will take two years to finish restoring the houses, Margo Linscott estimated. Although “we want the family to enjoy it first,” she envisions opening a bed-and-breakfast for tourists.
That would continue a tradition of hospitality. The family has 20 guest books filled with the names of people who stopped over the years to seek directions or satisfy their curiosity.
“Perfect strangers would pull over,” recalled Hess. “Before long, they’d be sitting over coffee and eating Mom’s cookies.”
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