Museum honors Hackbarth

Linda Hackbarth may be the best friend of the Museum of North Idaho.

The Museum's annual Friend of History award was presented recently to Linda Hackbarth for her work in preserving the history of the Bayview area.

Hackbarth's interest in local history began in 1996 when she retired to her summer home in Bayview. She quickly became acquainted with the locals and heard all kinds of fascinating stories about the history of the area.

That motivated her to begin researching and interviewing long-time residents. For a few years she tried to interest others in forming a historical society, but when that failed she decided to forge ahead on her own.

She began by compiling a collection of early photos gathered by Roy and Ethel Ellis in the 1960s and '70s and incorporating them into a computer slide show.

She gave some programs using the CD that spurred enough interest that people without computers started to ask for it in book form. She then compiled her first photo book, producing it on her home printer. Those were sold upon request and at Bayview's annual Fourth of July Bazaar.

Hackbarth then began research into the past and wrote a book about the early history of Bayview and some of the communities at the southern end of Lake Pend Oreille.

Initially she cranked those out on her home printer before asking Dorothy Dahlgren, museum director, if the museum might be interested in producing it.

The editing board agreed and in 2003 the museum published Linda's book "Bayview and Lakeview: And Other Early Settlements on Southern Lake Pend Oreille."

The following year, Hackbarth produced a 38-minute DVD.

Linda continues to update her photo book, making a major revision last year in preparation for Bayview's Centennial Celebration this year - 2010. It marks 100 years since the Prairie Development Company of Spokane platted the town site.

Always fascinated with the very early times on Lake Pend Oreille, she began searching the 1860 era settlement called Pend'Oreille City.

After four years she has completed a manuscript based on three journals written by men who were at the lake and associated with the Montana & Oregon Transportation Company that built the three steamboats that carried supplies and miners across the lake and up the Clark Fork River to the gold mining camps in Montana and British Columbia.