An historic building in the Beaver Valley damaged in a ferocious windstorm is expected to be moved soon.
The one-room Park Siding log schoolhouse, which has been a museum since the early 1990s, saw holes punctured in its roof when a tree came down on it late last month.
Coincidentally, plans were already in the works to relocate the building to Fruitvale. The Regional District of Kootenay Boundary owns the building and cares for it with the Beaver Valley and Pend d’Oreille Historical Society.
Beaver Valley regional district director explained that it was part of a longstanding dream to develop a replica train station in Fruitvale, which has come to naught.
“We’ve been working on that plan in partnership with Atco Wood Products for many years, trying to secure a lease with Burlington Northern Santa Fe,” she said.
“Unfortunately, over these past few months, we realized that that’s likely never going to happen over some future possible environmental issues that no one really wanted to sign off on.”
The plan called for the schoolhouse to be moved next to the replica train station. While the station is no longer in the works, Grieve said she still wants to work with the Village of Fruitvale to develop the park behind the Memorial Hall and the school will be moved there to anchor the park’s design and development.
Grieve said while the school sustained some damage, she expects it can be fixed, although the regional district is still waiting to hear from its insurance company.
She added the idea of moving the building into town is to make it more accessible to the public.
The property the school sits on now isn’t its original location. And here things get confusing. Although most sources state the school was built in 1912, the best evidence is that it is slightly younger. The Nelson Daily News of Jan. 25, 1915 reported: “The new school at Park Siding is now completed and the teacher is already there but owing to the fact that the desks have not arrived the school will not open for a few days.”
According to the Kootenay-Columbia Educational Heritage Society, the school was originally on the property of its builder, John Potter Bell, whose children were among the first pupils.
The local school board bought a one-acre lot in 1919 and on that site had a larger one-room frame school built, which opened on Jan. 20, 1922. This second school closed in 1947 due to a teacher shortage and burned down on May 23, 1948, in what was described by the Daily News as a “mysterious fire of unknown origin.”
In 1989, the earlier log school was moved across the highway from the Bell property to the site of the second school and restored. Driving forces behind the project were John Potter Bell’s grandson Jack Bell and Jack’s wife June, who also served as caretakers when the school reopened as a museum in 1991.
Grieve said the Bell family has given its blessing to move the school to Fruitvale. She said she would like to see it happen this year, but it depends on the availability of contractors and on the Village of Fruitvale’s ability to prepare the site.
As for the aborted plans for the train station, she said the problem lay in the possibility of contaminants on the former Great Northern rail line and the question of who would be held liable if anything turned up.
Grieve said she wasn’t involved directly in discussions between lawyers for the RDKB and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, but added that Atco Forest Products CEO Scott Weatherford “worked very hard over the years to try and make this happen. Scott tried for years to get past any issues and we just couldn’t get there.”
(CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled Scott Weatherford’s name.)
