Once a teacher, always a teacher

COEUR d’ALENE — Dave Eubanks taught middle school for years, survived a heart transplant, served on the school board and can now add Coeur d’Alene historian to his resume.

A group of women reuniting from the University of Iowa gather semi-annually in different parts of the country.

This year, they were lucky enough to land in Coeur d’Alene, where group member Jane Schott now resides.

Strolling on foot, Eubanks casually shared his wealth of knowledge with the enthralled audience.

“Most people even in Coeur d’Alene don’t know anything about our past,” Eubanks said. “Everybody should take this tour.”

Eubanks’ history lesson began Friday as soon as the group stepped out of the Museum of North Idaho.

Northwest Boulevard has quite a history itself.

Originally part of the Mullan Trail, it was commissioned in the 1850s. Mullan, a corporal in the U.S. Army, was tasked with cutting a road through the mountains. Eventually the road was “cleaned up” and it became Mullan Road. Later it was known as Highway 10, then as the Yellowstone Trail, then part of I-90 and finally Northwest Boulevard.

Originally all of Coeur d’Alene was owned by the Schitsu’umsh tribal people. “The tribe and their ancestors go back possibly 10,000 years,” Eubanks said.

In the early 1800s, French fur trappers came through. Trading beaver pelts, they found the native people to be “really shrewd traders,” Eubanks said.

Calling them the Coeur d’Alene, the term indicated that “they had hearts that were really sharp.” The term expressed the challenge of negotiations.

Following Custer's defeat in the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, Congress sent the western commanding general, William Tecumseh Sherman, to locate a site for another fort.

Conflicts with the Spokane Tribe and the Nez Perce made Coeur d'Alene a prime location for strategic defense.

“The ideal was to have a fort every 300 miles in areas where there may be future troubles,” Eubanks said.

General Sherman crossed the Mullan Trail and saw Lake Coeur d’Alene to the south and the river to the west. He realized there would be no need for a palisade because of the natural barriers provided, Eubanks said.

In 1879 about 100 soldiers began to clear the land. They built stablesand rudimentary barracks. The first significant structure erected was the Fort Ground Chapel, which still sits in its original location.

The chapel is the second oldest building in Idaho, behind only the Cataldo Mission.

In 1941, the U.S. joined World War II. Following Pearl Harbor, there was “a huge fear of the Japanese” and a need to train sailors for the Pacific War, Eubanks said. It was decided to build a naval training center inland, rather than on the coast.

The Farragut Naval Training Station was established and named by President Roosevelt himself, after his hero Admiral David Farragut from the Civil War, Eubanks said.

“Ultimately they would train about 293,000 young men and some women,” he said.

The sailors needed a place where they could go on leave. Officers took note of the community center that had been erected on the grounds of Fort Sherman in 1938.

For the next several years, the military secured an agreement with the city of Coeur d'Alene to use the community center for $1 per year, on the condition that it would be returned in good shape. The center stood near the shore of Lake Coeur d'Alene in City Park.

The community center's story itself is one of Coeur d'Alene's most fascinating stories. People had been "desperate" for a civic center, Eubanks said, as the Great Depression was deeply affecting the city.

“Coeur d’Alene was really hurting," Eubanks said. "This was a logging town and logging was basically dead because no one was building."

With Roosevelt’s New Deal in the works, citizens petitioned the government for a “jobs creation project,” Eubanks said. When funding was granted, hundreds of otherwise destitute people were hired to build the center, he said.

“They built the single largest log building in the Pacific Northwest at that time,” Eubanks said. Made entirely of tamarack, it could seat up to 2,200 people and hosted “big concerts, singers from back east and Hollywood entertainers.”

The war ended in the summer of 1945 and Farragut Naval Base activity was minimized. A 17-year-old sailor recruit with a history of pyromania burned the community center down that year, Eubanks said.

Whether it was intentional or accidental isn’t clear. The story is that “he slipped into the building one night and hit after everyone was gone. He said he was just looking for the bathroom and he struck a match and dropped it, burning the whole thing to the ground,” Eubanks said.

City Park has been here for over 100 years.

“Back in the 1890s there was a rail line that ran right through where the Museum of North Idaho is today,” Eubanks said. The electric train ran from a depot at Independence Point to the clock tower in downtown Spokane and the fare was only one dollar.

A bustling place, “you would have ladies in their Victorian and Edwardian garb with their umbrellas. There were flower gardens and there may be a military band from Fort Sherman playing in the bandshell,” Eubanks said. “You would hear the constant hooting from as many as 50 steamboats on the lake.”

In July of 1907, more than 100,000 people visited Coeur d’Alene.

“And you think it’s crowded now,” Eubanks said.

A guest on the tour, Linda Brouillette from Arizona, was suitably impressed

“It’s great!" she said. "I’m moving here tomorrow.”

Originally from the Midwest, Brouillette is “completely mesmerized by the trees and the beauty of this place. It is very sweet.”

For more great lessons on Coeur d’Alene’s history, visit the Museum of North Idaho at 115 Northwest Blvd. Open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m., admission is $5 for adults and $1.50 for children ages five through twelve.