Chapter 05 - The Business Grows; Disaster Strikes

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There were tears; there was anguish and disappointment; there was almost desperation; but there was not despair. The townspeople - all their friends,- furnished them with such personal items as to tide them over for a few days. But the largest contribution from the citizenry was advice. "After all" they argued, "all of your boarders, roomers, customers and patrons were burned out with you! "Don't let them down. Start up your whole business again immediately. Where? In the old bunk house that we saved from the fire!" By evening this advice was being implemented into action with the help of every one available. The main bunk house room was cleared, cleaned up and converted into a dining room and kitchen with makeshift partitions. The cabins trailing out to the rear were filled with beds and tiers of bunks for the "Roomers". Even the small lean - to which, a few years previously, had been used by the chinese laundryman and jeweler was quickly converted into a bar. Groceries, merchandise and all other items needed were freely furnished on credit by the merchants and tradesmen, - even the competitors. Within twenty four hours the Strongs were again in business.

Billy Johnson, a Swede carpenter, was the best builder in the area. He and his partner, Dick Skoogler another Swede, specialized in the construction of mining structures, flumes, mills and other appurtenant buildings, but at the moment they were not under contract. The day after the fire, with the ashes still too hot to search, Johnson approached the Strongs with a proposition to build them a new modern hotel on the lot where the, old saloon had stood, and which they owned outright. In the matter of paying for the work, Johnson said "Just give us board and bed until we complete the building. Then when you make it out of the business, pay us our wages, deducting the charge for board and bed". Dave Natwick owned a little steam powered sawmill a half mile or so west of town. In most cases it had been cheaper to build with logs rather than with lumber, so Natwick had kept a rather small supply of lumber on hand. However, he offered to start up his mill and saw out the entire order of materials as needed. Financial arrangements? Pay for it out of the hotel business after the project was completed. Mr. O.C. Lapp owned the principal general merchandise store. In order to encourage the start of a new hotel he offered unlimited credit on hardware, nails, furnishings and equipment, which he promised to ship in by the freight wagon load as needed. All of this did not mean that the Strongs were completely bankrupt. They had prospered before the late hotel venture. So, they had an account of some sort in a Lewiston Idaho bank, - but certainly not enough to finance a new hotel.

In any event, on June 1, less than two weeks after the fire, construction was started on the new hotel. In the interim, the ashes of the burned buildings had been raked and searched. In those days hard money, including gold coins, was the more popular medium in circulation. A surprising amount of this, together with chunks of melted silver, gold and jewelry, was found. Some men even removed quantities of ashes and dirt from areas where valuables were thought to have been stored, hauled it to the creek in the north meadow, and ran it through an old gold rocker to separate the valuable metals from the ashes. With the rubble cleared away, long pine logs were snaked onto the site to be used as stringers and posts in the foundation, and construction was commenced.

While business continued in the erstwhile china house - bunk house, the building of the new two story hotel progressed with surprising rapidity. Johnson and Skoogler did all of the designing planning and directing, as well as all of the carpenter work requiring real skill. Rough framing and nailing was done by any available labor. Included on the ground floor was the hotel lobby with wash room, dining room, kitchen, pantry, a bath-room, and the barroom, On the second floor a long hall-way led to about fourteen bed rooms. A building of this kind required dozens of window and door casings and frames, and such a thing as surfaced or planed lumber was not available. So, every piece of lumber going into these frames and components were ripped to size by hand, hand planed, hand grooved and dadoed and shaped with hand tools, mostly the old fashioned variety of wooden block planes. Then there was the rather ornate lobby counter or desk, the stair case, bannisters and posts, and the lobby table for magazines and papers, and many other items, all fashioned from rough lumber by Johnson and Skoogler. Some items,- quite luxurious it seemed then, had to be imported by freight wagon from "outside". There was ship lap to build the false front on the hotel. Fancy four inch tongue and groove detail material was imported for wainscoting around the lobby and bar - room walls. There were cut shingles for the roofing, and of course, windows and doors to be brought in. Furthermore, enough four inch pine tongue and groove flooring was imported for the entire first floor of the structure,- a real innovation for the time and place. All of this must have been rather expensive, considering the fact that the average cost of freighting from the railway terminal to Elk City (depending on seasons and condition of roads) was two cents per pound.

The outside of the building, other than the false front, was of board and batt construction, that is, 10 or 12 inch boards nailed on perpendicularly, and a 3 inch batt nailed over each crack. The inside of each room was covered with one inch rough lumber of all widths, nailed on diagonally to serve not only as walls, but as solid bracing. Then, heavy, unbleached muslin was stretched tightly over the boards and -firmly tacked, and finally, a covering of ornate figured wall paper,- different designs for each room,- was applied. The rough lumber floors of the bed rooms were covered with cheap wall to wall carpeting tacked down over old newspapers.