History Forged by Hands and Hearts
By John O’Bryan
When you live in a place surrounded by wide open vistas, beautiful sunrises, sunsets, and wildlife around every corner, you can get blind to it. You know it’s beautiful, but it somehow becomes commonplace and mundane because you see it every day.
Another amazing sunrise happens as a moose ambles across a meadow, and you acknowledge it as you turn to make your morning cup of coffee and open your phone. But when a friend comes to visit, and they go on and on about how amazing everything is, and how beautiful the vistas are, and how cool the moose are, you suddenly start to see it all with fresh eyes.
Since my college days, I have driven through Deary countless times on the way to and from my favorite fishing spot in the entire state (no, I won’t tell you where), and I realized recently that I, too, had become blind to how amazing the area and the town really are. I have stopped in Deary to fill up my tank with the least expensive gas in the area and to get an energy drink before heading back to Moscow, but that was about it, and I needed an education if I was going to make Deary our Spotlight City. Thankfully, I work with someone who lives there, and she said that if I wanted to get the low-down (that’s old person speak for “learning something”), I had to speak with Denny Proctor.
I moved to Idaho in 1984 to attend the University of Idaho and heard about the town of Deary almost immediately. I can neither confirm nor deny that I ever did this—okay, I never did—but within a few weeks of classes starting, I heard about something called the Bovill Run. In case you’ve never heard of this, this infamous “run” is really nothing more than a drinking game that involves stopping at every bar you can find between Moscow and Potlatch. Those of you who have lived in Moscow are scratching your heads right now because you know that Potlatch is only 20 minutes away, with nothing in between other than Viola and some farm fields, and you are probably wondering how this is even a thing…
Well, there is another way to Potlatch from Moscow if you take the road less traveled, also called the long way around. The long way around involves stopping at Troy, Deary, Bovill, Princeton, Harvard, and Potlatch. This makes the trip to Potlatch considerably longer, since the designated driver is required to stop at each town so the patrons in the rented U-Haul can tumble out of the back and chug a beer before loading back up and heading to the next destination. Man, don’t you just love college students?
Denny and I met at a local eatery recently and spent a few hours talking about his love of this town, the people, and what makes Deary so special. But before we got into that, I just had to ask him if he remembered the Bovill Run. Denny is a volunteer at the fire department (a fire department ready for anything, with 11 firetrucks, one tracked vehicle, and two ambulances), and he nodded his head knowingly.
He told me that when the local bar saw a U-Haul truck stopping out front, they would often lock the doors and pretend no one was home, or, if they were more industrious, they would sell T-shirts with slogans like “I survived the Bovill Run!” Denny has lived here all 71 years of his life and knows Deary. I got my education from him.
As we talked in the cafe across from where his dad used to lease the service station, Denny reminisced about his family and all the fun he had growing up in Deary. He told me about grain trucks lined all the way from the elevator to the Kendrick highway, and how the drivers would pay him a dime if he and his friend would ride their bikes downtown to get Oscar, the elevator operator at the bar-cafe where he was having coffee.
They would deliver the message and then get double-scoop ice cream cones with their bounty. He told me about putting pennies on the train tracks and how the train that rode the same track saved his mom when she was sick and needed help. We talked about how the high school seniors would paint their graduation year on Spud Hill, only to have it burned off by kids from the junior class so they could paint theirs instead. “It was quite challenging to keep it up there since competing junior and senior classes would change it weekly back then.”
With these memories and hundreds more, it was obvious to me why Denny has lived in Deary his whole life, but I asked him the question anyway.
His response was as I expected: “There are a lot of nice people who look out for each other.” Simple as that, and it’s true. Denny was a logger and did a number of other jobs in his 71 years. There is an aura in this town of women and men (like Denny) who just know how to do stuff and know how to help those in need.
“You gotta do what you’ve gotta do to take care of your neighbors. You can’t just ignore them.” His words are so simple, yet so profound. It might sound like a cliche, but it’s not. If I were to break down anywhere, this is where I would hope to have it happen. Not only would I get my car fixed, but I might also get a cup of coffee and whatever my rescuer and his family were having for dinner. It’s just how Deary is.
Like all small communities, Deary has a beginning. The official town of Deary began in 1907 when the first lots were sold by the Deary Townsite Company after William Deary, general manager for the Potlatch corporation, decided to build his railroad station there, but people had been living and homesteading in the area since the mid-1880s. The story of Deary is interwoven with the logging industry, homesteading, farming, and the railroad.
This type of history is not unfamiliar to many small towns in northern Idaho and, like many others, Deary ebbed and flowed through the Homesteading Act, the Great Depression, and the difficulties of living and working and carving out a living from the land without the help of modern machinery or anyone else but each other and whatever kids were old enough to wield a rake or a hoe.
They even weathered a devastating fire that burned down half of the town in the 1920s. Yet somehow people survived, and many thrived.
Timber was cleared, and soon 160-acre plots of farmland began to appear out of the timbered, verdant wilderness. The railroad was built through town, which helped the people who hung on through the tough times. They built schools and churches and barns together and lived as a community. Soon, businesses began popping up, and the modern conveniences, such as food that you didn’t have to grow yourself, began showing up at trading posts, and this wilderness soon began to look very much like a town.
Because things can change quickly in a rural community, Deary easily could have fallen into disrepair and become a wide spot in the road known only as the place where you get irritated because you have to slow from 60 to 25 as you head for your own barn, but the residents refused to let that happen. The people love this town, and a number of them I spoke with are third, fourth, or fifth-generation residents. Things have changed over the years as the city has grown, and everyone doesn’t know everyone else like they used to, but the feeling is the same.
Towns like Deary were born out of a desire to have a place. One place. A place that makes you happy and one you can call home, and if you ever leave, it’s a place that you look back on and want to be back there. There are only good memories and happy times. Okay, that’s a bit sappy, because there might have been that bully that picked on you until you punched him in the nose and then you were best friends, or that girl (the red-headed girl) that broke your heart, but then you moved away and later moved back to find her still unmarried and you fall in love, get married, and live in Deary the rest of your lives. In small towns, things like this are possible.
I also went to high school in a small town – the sign coming in from the west said “Population 36” – and everyone knew everyone else. When someone did something great, we all felt like we had a part in it… especially when the high school teams did something special. Schools are important, but doubly so in rural communities, and especially so in Deary.
People support their schools and sports. Education and team sports go hand in hand, and it often feels like the entire town turns out for sporting events. The school system is such a part of this community that the sign coming into Deary doesn’t only announce your arrival into the town, it also announces that you are entering the home of “The Mustangs”, the high school’s mascot.
The love of their kids and The Mustangs was brought clearly home to me as I watched a video posted to social media of the Deary girls’ basketball team bus, after they had just won the State 1A championship, being led through town by what looked like the entire volunteer fire department’s stable of trucks, with lights flashing and sirens blaring. People showed up and loudly cheered for them as they made their way through town. It was like royalty had arrived. This type of support is not soon forgotten and happens across the board, from football to basketball to track and wrestling. This town loves its kids.
In MY small town, like in Deary, when something bad happened, we all mourned, and if something really bad happened, we felt it for years. It’s what being in a small community is about—living life together daily and supporting each other through good and bad times. Of course, when I did something bad, but not too bad, it often got home long before I did, and there was really nothing for me to do but try to look really sad and hope I didn’t get grounded.
When I asked Sarah Dean, the City Clerk and a 4th-generation Deary resident, if her escapades ever made it home to her parents before she got home, she emphatically said “Yes!” and that she hated it so much. She hated it, that is, until she had children of her own. Now she sees it as a huge benefit and has informed her children that she will likely know everything that happens, so they should just tell her the truth first thing. It’s every parent’s dream.
Sarah keeps watch over the goings on in Deary, and when I visited, she showed me the stock of old photos (the ones you see here). I asked her the same question I asked Denny: “Why have you chosen to live here your whole life?” Her answer was very similar.
“I feel fortunate to live in a close-knit community where neighbors truly look out for one another. We love the strong sense of belonging in our community. I value the safety and stability this area provides for my family, from the way neighbors rally together in times of need, and is complemented by an exceptional school district.”
In fact, almost everyone I talked to came up with the same answer: community, safety, people, a good place to raise kids. Kids are looked after. Animals that are lost are taken home, fed, and loved on until the owners are found, and they seem to always be found. Deary has fostered self-sufficient people who look out for each other.
They do have to know how to protect each other, too, since moose, elk, bear, and other creatures roam freely in the area. One of the brochures that I saw at the Chamber office was “Living with Mountain Lions.” These are not the kind of cougars you would find on Venice Beach in California (Speaking of California—if you live there—you would hate Deary, so you probably don’t even have to visit – okay, I’m kidding… kind of).
People who live here are the types of people who know how to live with cougars (and not just the Washington State University kind, although they have to do that too). Just a note on living with actual mountain lions—to misquote Teddy Roosevelt— “walk tall and carry a big stick… or a gun… and you’ll be fine.”
When I Googled (yes, Google has become a verb) “Deary,” one of the results said that Deary is a bedroom community for the nearby city of Moscow. While this is true, in one sense, the phrase “Bedroom Community” brings up visions of people who sleep in Deary, but live their lives in Moscow. There may be a few people who do this, but it’s not the norm, and even if people work in Moscow, Deary is really where their community is. However, I can attest that Deary has become a destination town for many in Moscow, and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with the Bovill Run.
There is a vibrant group of businesses that keeps people from the surrounding area visiting often. There is a bakery, a creamery, a wine bar, a quilt and craft store, and also a butcher shop and thrift store. If you’re looking for a weekend getaway, there are a number of AirBnB places to stay, and when you get up in the morning after a restful night of sleep, you won’t have any problem finding a place that will make your daily caramel macchiato. Fuzzy’s is still open and continues to be a popular spot to hang out, and they will happily serve you, even if you arrive in the back of a U-Haul.
Many small towns have days commemorating their existence, and Deary is no different. Deary Days usually happens the first Saturday in August, with a number of events to see or participate in. There is a pancake breakfast, a fun run (which I think is an oxymoron), food, games, a car show, a volleyball tournament, a parade, a logging show, live music, ice cream, cold beer, and room-temperature wine. If you haven’t gone, you need to—it’s really fun and everything one would expect from a day commemorating such a historic and fun town.
A few months after Deary Days, during the first week of October, the Deary Autumn Festival takes place. When you go, you will find food, vendors, apple cider, and lots of crafts created by the local community. It’s also very popular, and thousands of people show up.
Sarah said that Deary will be working on a revitalization project for the next few years, which will make the town safer for kids to ride around on their bikes and to make it even more of a destination for people from the surrounding communities.
When it’s finished, the town will have a new look but will still have the same feel, because in Deary it’s not the physical buildings or the look of the place that’s important, but the people—the same people who are happy living amongst cougars—that make the difference.
John O'Bryan Writes 