'Broken Arrow' bows out

After serving our nation and then our camp for a total of 86 years, Broken Arrow Lodge was scheduled for demolition on Monday. That drafty, leaky, thoroughly worn-out building hasn’t housed campers in a decade.

In 1945, just over 75 years ago, Camp Lutherhaven’s founders purchased several old buildings from a former CCC camp in Avery for a total of $500. All throughout the snowy winter of 1945, a crew of six stalwart young men from Fairfield, Wash., cut the retired barracks into pieces and floated them down the St. Joe River, as there were no suitable roads, to then be loaded onto an old farm truck and driven over 100 steep, icy miles for reassembly.

One wintery day, as one of the men came down the slick mountainous incline in his loaded truck, it slid out of control and came to a jarring stop—one wheel hanging over the road edge, with nothing but a deep canyon below! The only thing that was lost was a pool table from the old CCC. Some say it's still up there.

All winter the men labored to clear roads, move buildings, and level the ground. By the time spring came, great quantities of lumber, logs, random plumbing and electrical parts, and sawed-up chunks of CCC buildings were piled high on the Camp Lutherhaven hillside overlooking Mica Bay. In the following months, volunteers gathered to help assemble Broken Arrow Lodge and Good Earth Lodge at their new home on Lake Coeur d’Alene — sacred spaces that would house happy campers at Lutherhaven for decades to come.

Historic photographs from the University of Idaho archives show the original cabin sites on the St. Joe River; you can still see how the original woodwork and window framing inside Broken Arrow matches the photo from the original CCC campsite.

Following the demolition announcement, dozens of lifelong Lutherhaven campers began sharing positive memories of the grand old cabin. Several staff members shared that the first time they came to camp they stayed in Broken Arrow — whether five years ago or 25-plus years ago — for a stay that inspired a lifetime of love and service through Lutherhaven.

Eighty-six years of CCC and then Lutherhaven campers … countless stories and lives changed within these cabin walls. If only those boards could talk. Farewell, Broken Arrow.

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Nicole Duke is marketing and development associate with Lutherhaven Ministries.