their plans for the property
The property sold for $300,000. According to Boundary County School Superintendent Gary Pflueger, the school district received $286,499.65 from the purchase price after deduction of closing costs.
At present, the school district plans to use the proceeds from the sale for the needs of other district facilities.
"The money will be used only for facilities--needs, repairs, additions," said Mr. Pflueger. "A Facilities Committee is being formed to help us make informed decisions based upon a priority list. This committee will advise the Board. [Our district] has old buildings, and the cost of upkeep is draining us."
Boundary County School District 101 has a School Board meeting scheduled for tonight (5:30 p.m. at Bonners Ferry High School). One of the agenda items scheduled for tonight's meeting is "Discussion/Decision on funds from the Sale of Evergreen Property." Of note, tonight's school board meeting will be broadcast with live video on the Boundary County Live website (www.boundarycountylive.com).
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It was around the early 1950s that the school district began looking seriously at adding a new school building in the eastern part of Boundary County. The Evergreen property was purchased from Mr. and Mrs. Frank Struble in June 1952 for the sum of $250. Construction began in the summer of 1954.
During construction of the building, it was informally known as the Curley Creek-Buckhorn school, but once the building was completed, it was named Evergreen School
The original school building included two classroooms, a boiler room, two lavatories, a janitor's room, and a kitchen, and was built for a total cost of approximately $43,000 in 1954 dollars (which is around $375,000 in 2015).
Forty-two students were in attendance at the first day the school was opened for instruction on the morning of Monday, November 15, 1954. A formal dedication ceremony for the building was held December 6, 1954. That event was attended by over 100 people, and included musical presentations by a high school group and by Evergreen students and others, along with the entire attendance singing the Idaho state song. Speeches were given by the building's architects and builders and by William Maas, who at the time was chairman of the board of school trustees.
Another speech entitled "The Last (?) Word" was was given toward the end of the ceremony by Leonard Kucera, who at the time was trustee of the Evergreen School zone. His speech was followed by remarks entitled "A Woman's Reply (Her's is the Last Word)," given by Evergreen School principal Clara Hewitt. (It should be noted that her speech was actually, in fact, the final speech and last word of the meeting).
Since its original construction, there have been a few renovations and additions to the building over the years.
The Evergreen School property was sold to an Idaho limited liability company called Triple C Holdings. NewsBF spoke to one of the principals of that company, a gentleman named Brian Beckle, who is from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
"We've had a lot of people asking about what is going on and what we are going to do with Evergreen," Mr. Beckle said.
He went on to explain that his family is one of a group of four or five families who hail from urban areas around the United States, who decided they wanted to slow down a little and live a simpler lifestyle. They began looking for a property that would accommodate what they had in mind, eventually ended up looking in Idaho, and finally found what they were looking for in another property (not the Evergreen property) located in the Curley Creek area along old Highway 2.
"It just felt like the right place to be," said Mr. Beckle.
These families formed Triple C Holdings as a way to pool their resources and form a legal entity to make property purchases.
Along with the Curley Creek property, they ended up also purchasing the Evergreen School property. For the short term, the famililes plan to do some renovation at the school, turning it into a residence for the families where they can stay until the other Curley Creek property is ready for them to live there.
In the longer term, once they are established at their Curley Creek property, they may look at selling Evergreen, perhaps putting a business there, or use it as a home school.
Mr. Beckle said his group is well aware that Evergreen has a lot of ties with the Boundary County community. He said a lot of people have stopped by to meet the new owners, to ask questions about what is going on, and that a former caretaker of the Evergreen property visited and shared with him the history of the school.
He said in their inspection of the building, they came across many old pictures of Evergreen School and groups of students, some of the pictures dating back to 1954. He plans to contact the Boundary County Museum to see if they would have an interest in acquiring those photographs.
As mentioned, Mr. Beckle and his family are from Minnesota. The other families involved in Triple C Holdings are from Arizona and from Utah.
The Boundary County area, he said, "felt like the right place to be."
"We've been really happy," he said. "Quite a few people have stopped by. It is not our plan to 'live off the grid,' or 'live off the land,' we want to be part of the community. We are excited to meet a lot of people."