Families add a little Old West to their backyards

Some people sit in their backyards and dream of adding a swimming pool, a fountain or a flower bed.

But a few backyard dreamers in Elk, Hauser and Athol have given in to their desire to bring back the good ol’ days – those days when Rowdie Yates rode into town after a long cattle drive, the sheriff kept the peace with his trusty six-shooter and the swingin’ doors of the local saloons were the busiest doors in town.

Sixteen years ago, Jeannie Knapp built a line of wooden buildings along an imaginary road in a field in front of her home along Blanchard Road near Elk.

Today, the buildings look a little dilapidated – a little like an Idaho mining town after the silver streak had petered out – but her enthusiasm remains high for “Clint Town.”

Knapp built the town in tribute to her love of the old TV Westerns in general and actor Clint Eastwood in particular.

“I loved ‘Bonanza,’ ‘The Big Valley,’ ‘The Virginian’ and ‘Rawhide.’ I’m a big fan of Clint Eastwood – I met him once, you know.”

When a neighbor told her she was tearing down an old chicken coop, Knapp and her son went to work.

They lugged the old wood home and eventually pieced together three buildings – a general store, a jail and a saloon with swinging doors. A bar inside the saloon and skeletons sitting at the tables in typical Western garb – hats, boots and Levis – completed Knapp’s interior-decorating scheme.

“Clint Town” has not gone unnoticed through the years, according to Knapp. A bluegrass band once took band pictures in front of her saloon, and Riverside High School filmed a movie there a few years ago, she proudly points out.

Knapp says she always intended to build more structures, but life got in the way.

“I wanted to build a church and a stable,” she said, “and a tepee. I got the cover, but I needed 17 22-foot sticks.”

Knapp never found the sticks, so the tepee never was constructed, nor was the covered wagon she wanted to add.

But Knapp still has dreams for her little town.

Linda and Bob Ashcroft have been working on “Bobville,” a colorful Western town in their Hauser backyard, since 2001.

A sign over the horse pasture behind their house reads, “Just Because.” And that is why, Linda Ashcroft says, they built the town – “just because I was tired of looking at the horse pasture, and I needed a fence.”

With Linda, a talented artist, doing the designing and Bob doing the building, the Ashcrofts built a few false-front buildings, including a U.S. marshal’s office, Bea’s Merchandise (a general store), an attorney’s office and a church before they started constructing complete buildings.

According to Linda Ashcroft, “We built for our own pleasure. We were thinking of our grandkids and of making it useful.”

The result is two blocks of a replica Western-style frontier town for young and old alike.

There’s Ruby’s Saloon, complete with an upstairs brothel reached through a back stairway; Winter’s Boarding House; a stable with a forge for shoeing horses; a log cabin; and a train depot with a caboose sitting on a nearby siding.

Linda Ashcroft’s trompe l’oeil paintings add fanciful touches throughout the town, and Bob Ashcroft’s ability to fabricate the smallest details, mostly out of recycled materials, make the buildings fascinating inside and out.

The interior of each building is decorated with vintage furnishings, historic objects and a few items picked to make the rooms comfortable when family members visit – such as couches, chairs, beds and an electric coffeemaker or two.

The Ashcrofts have invited a few groups such as the Dutch Oven Society, the Master Gardeners and a Red Hat group to visit “Bobville,” but mostly they enjoy sharing their creation with friends and family members.

And while Linda Ashcroft admits that her original vision of “Bobville” is pretty much complete, she still can point out where a few more buildings – and maybe even another street or two – might fit in.

In tribute to the 1950s-era TV show “Gunsmoke,” a replica of Dodge City sits in the yard of a home near Athol, whose owners could not be reached for an interview for this story.

The wood-stained buildings, with purple trim and vintage windows and doors, include a two-story hotel, an outhouse, a cabin and the Long Branch Saloon.

A mission-style white church, topped off with a brass bell and a cross, sits at the far end of the dusty road near “Boot Hill.”

And from the number of white crosses in the crowded cemetery, it’s obvious Marshal Matt Dillon has been busy keeping the peace in the little town.