Epilogue
Potlatch Mill Site - Aug. 15, 1999
On August 13, 1981, company
officials announced a temporary mill closure; many employees left work that week believing they would
eventually return. But in March of 1983, company officials announced the mill's permanent closure.
The company had a long history of closing mills on short notice. That this had become standard company
procedure did not lessen the blow's impact. But the simple fact was that Potlatch, the business, had
long outgrown its origins in Potlatch, the town, and by the 1980s operations in Latah County were
expendable. The large old mill at Potlatch, originally designed to last only fifty years and already pushing
eighty, was too cumbersome to profitably remodel. It was the first of several Idaho operations closed
down.
When the mill closed in 1981, the
old theory that Potlatch would become a ghost town resurfaced. But that fear was not realized. While
a few houses and businesses changed hands, the community's population remained stable. In fact, so
much of the original town remains intact that in 1986 the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office
nominated forty-four Potlatch structures for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
Despite the incursion of the church on the former Nob Hill park, the south hill has the feel that Nob
Hill must have always had. The deciduous seedlings Allison Laird ordered in the early 1900s and
meticulously and evenly planted are now huge shade trees. Houses here, because they were the
best built, are well-preserved. Across town one can also still find a few examples of unaltered
architecture in the workers' houses. And even though most homes here have been extensively
remodeled, the north hill still has the feel of a planned community.
While the corporate structure
has been completely transformed Bill Deary, Allison Laird, or Frederick Weyerhaeuser would still
recognize the town of Potlatch. Though the mill is gone and many houses and buildings have been
altered, the town still has the unmistakable look of the community that Deary and Laird planned so
carefully eighty years ago.
