The court gives, the court takes away.

After a year of relative peaceful coexistence on the ground, retired District Court Judge James Judd reined in prospective sunbathers by drawing a firmer line in the sand this week that will exclude them from some portions of Sanders Beach on Lake Coeur d’Alene. The imaginary boundary at 2,130 feet above sea level will provide public access to the beach closest to the water but will exclude sun worshippers from seeking shade higher up in at least one popular area.

To their credit, officials from the city of Coeur d’Alene plan to ask the court to keep the beach open until the Idaho Supreme Court decides where the “ordinary high-water mark” on the beach is. Everything below that mark will be public. Everything above it will be private. Last year, Judd issued a temporary injunction opening the popular beach to the public below the seawalls at its 15th Street entrance. As a result, the community and East Lakeshore Drive homeowners, who claim the beach as their private property, got along for the first time in many summers.

The judge would be wise to extend the status quo and continue the peace for at least another summer.

Sanders Beach epitomizes the struggle between those trying to hold on to traditional Coeur d’Alene values and newcomers who don’t appreciate them.

Until the 1970s, the homeowners didn’t mind the community using the beach, extending east of Tubbs Hill. Changes began when property holders erected seawalls to extend their front yards across East Lakeshore Drive. But they still allowed public access to the beach. As these owners sold their property or died, they were replaced by some aggressive householders hell-bent on exercising what they considered to be their private property rights.

One defied the city’s shoreline ordinance by building a fence on the beach that remains a matter of litigation years later. Another set up a makeshift barricade at the corner of his seawall and defied city officials to make him take it down. Others posted signs declaring the beach in front of their homes was private property and ordering the public to keep away. Beachcombers, meanwhile, ignored the barriers, creating occasional hostile confrontations with the homeowners. In one instance, Coeur d’Alene Mayor Sandi Bloem paused during a swim to help break up a spat between a homeowner and a beach visitor.

Little movement occurred in the annual stalemate between the homeowners and beach users until the city, under the Bloem administration, and Kootenai County sued to determine the high-water mark, and Judd set it at 2,130, where it stands pending a hearing and decision by the Idaho Supreme Court.

At this point, it’s too much to hope that East Lakeshore Drive homeowners will come to their senses and negotiate an agreement with the city that would make last summer’s status quo permanent – public access in exchange for regular police patrols and beach cleanup by city park crews. With the boundaries of their property clearly drawn, the homeowners were comforted last year that police would back them in disputes with sunbathers. For their part, local residents had an alternative to the congested beaches, west of the Coeur d’Alene resort. Peace reigned on the beach, as it had in bygone days.