Harrison Beams With Old-Time Pride

As Harrison begins a weekend of celebration with its annual parade today and its Old Time Picnic on Sunday, most business owners and residents are looking to the future.

Joan Cornell, who owns the Harrison Trading Co., points to her newly renovated grocery store with its gleaming deli cases featuring an assortment of salads, cold cuts, fried chicken and freshly baked bread.

“I would not have done this if I thought Harrison was dying.”

Cornell beams, looking across the street at the city park.

“You know, it’s one of the prettiest parks in the state,” she said.

Her pride in the tree-shaded park is shared by others who have worked to build The Gazebo, the bandstand that was designed and completed last fall, thanks to widespread local contributions of money, materials and labor. New, brightly colored playground equipment also has been donated by the preschool and supporters.

Now, a new gift has sparked the spirits of people living in this old mill town halfway down Lake Coeur d’Alene’s east shore.

The late Mary Burleigh Lehmann, who, in 1902, was born in Harrison and lived there until 1917, left a bequest of more than $45,000 to the Harrison Old Time Picnic Committee to use for improvements to Harrison City Park.

Lehmann, who spent most of her adult life on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, where she died recently, requested that a flag pole be placed in the park along with a plaque acknowledging her gift.

The new pole and flag are in place and a new restroom facility stands completed. The members of the Old Time Picnic Committee decided the latter was a needed park improvement and construction, with the cooperation of the city, has been completed.

In addition to her gift to the Old Time Picnic, Lehmann’s will bequeathed $10,000 to the Crane Society, which maintains the Crane House, a historical museum on Harrison’s main street.

Very little information exists about Lehmann after 1917, when her family moved to Spokane. Few people living in Harrison today remember her. A restored early photo, published in this year’s annual edition of The Harrison Searchlight, shows a false-front, wood-frame building with a sign painted on the south wall reading “A.W. Burleigh, Groceries.”

The Burleigh Building, with an evaluation of $1,500, was listed among the buildings destroyed in the fire. Therefore, one might assume the loss of the family business precipitated their move to Spokane.

The minimal information existing today about Lehmann has been gleaned from several letters she wrote over the years to the editor of The Searchlight. The letters reveal that she graduated from the University of Idaho in 1925, moved to Hawaii the following year, back to the mainland in 1929 but returned to Hawaii in 1937 to make her permanent home.

Her letters also express fond memories of her childhood home. In one, she mentions that she and her husband attended the picnic in 1978 and she enjoyed seeing old friends.

During the years Lehmann lived in Harrison, the town had seven working mills and a population of more than 3,000. Today, the sign outside of town indicates a population of just more than 300.

In the past, Harrison has experienced its share of troubles - a typhoid epidemic, a devastating fire, a dwindling logging industry, once the town’s economic base, and recently, a crack in its new base, tourism.

This crack occurred when the Gateway Resort closed. The restaurant and marina went under financially and literally after the floods of 1996 and 1997, which swamped the waterfront buildings and dockside gas pumps.

Some boaters who normally regarded Harrison as a destination began to stay away when the news got out that there was no gas. But the news now is that gas is available for cars in the marina area. Bill Dick, who manages the pumps, keeps two 5-gallon gas cans available to boaters.

Ask people around town if the latest setback has hurt. The answers of those who operate the gift shops, restaurants and other services are mixed. Cheryl Kirkpatric, co-owner of Rose Cafe, says, “No, it hasn’t hurt at all. It’s actually helped. People are coming up the hill and finding Harrison.”

Others will say, “A little.”

Still others are uncertain.

But one thing is for sure. Townspeople have not lost spirit.