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OLDTOWN – Susie Luckey is the principal of Idaho Hill Elementary School located in a charming neighborhood in Oldtown. to its present site in Oldtown in the 1990s, holding up traffic.
“We moved it here ourselves - it backed up traffic,” he said. It now serves as the Oldtown visitors center.
The Oldtown visitor center is the cultural center of the town, hosting birthday parties, other events and community groups from the Rotary and Boy Scouts to the VFW auxiliary.
Liberty Williams moved to Oldtown from Spokane when she was in seventh grade and graduated from nearby House of the Lord Christian Academy.
She later returned to Oldtown to take the academy’s principal job. She has been there for six years.
The academy has students from kindergarten to 12th grade graduation. House of the Lord Christian Academy is raising funds to complete a 5,000 square feet gym project, with bleachers and lockers. Williams said she hopes to complete the project by fall.
“It will be available for basketball practices and community events. We will also add four classrooms to the back of it,” she said.
Williams said when Newport and Oldtown divided, Oldtown was on the opposite side of the tracks, literally, - gambling, taverns, etc.
“I have seen it rebound for families,” she said.
“It’s special to watch students grow up here. With being involved in school, I enjoy small town living with the support and concern we have for each other,” Williams said.
The school celebrated its 100th birthday this year, but it appears uncertain if it will celebrate another with the West Bonner County School District levy voted down last week.
Luckey however said she was fortunate to have worked for the district for 37 years, 18 of those as principal of Idaho Hill.
“When I came here, they had a strong team of educators and parent support,” she said. “Everybody is somebody. We help kids to be successful.”
Idaho Hill has seen its changes run deep with the history of Oldtown. Before the state lines were drawn, Idaho Hill served students from K-8th grades, graduating to a high school in Newport.
Located in Bonner County is the small town of Oldtown. This town shares the Washington and Idaho state line with the small town of Newport. Together, there is a population of approximately 2,000 residents in the community.
Oldtown dates back to the early 1890s, settled by immigrants who came to the area for the timber, mineral, and agricultural resources. It was known then as Newport, Idaho.
However, because most residents lived on the Washington side of Newport, the United States Postmaster General required that the Idaho post office be moved into the Evergreen State, eliminating the town of Newport, Idaho, and creating Newport, Washington.
Newport, Idaho was then considered an unincorporated village until 1947 when it officially became known as Oldtown.
Mayor Lonnie Orr said Oldtown was a wild and wooly community with taverns with rooms above, i.e. brothels. In 1947, the town had to be incorporated to permit gambling machines. Oldtown became a gambling mecca for people in Spokane, Mayor Orr said, until gambling disappeared by 1952.
“It’s a nice little community,” Orr said.
Orr said recent commercial growth of the Highway 2 corridor within the past five or six years is good for the community.
The new Super 1 grocery store attracts shoppers from Priest Lake to Blanchard, Orr said, and helps other shops and restaurants in Oldtown and nearby Newport.
“We will never stop development. You may be able to control it. By growing like we are, we are doing service to the community,” he said.
John Linch, Boy Scout master, charter member of the Newport-Priest River Rotary Club, remembered the Albeni Falls dam visitor center being moved by truck
