Folks, I have been thinking about some of the old buildings in Sandpoint that I would have liked to have visited before they vanished. Places like the old Farmin School, the Humbird Mill and Store, and especially the Rink Opera House that stood near the intersection of Church Street and Third Avenue. I’ve been told it never did have the singing type of opera but it did have some pretty uptown visitors. If you can take a minute I would like to tell you about one such person.

It was in early April 1911 and a train ground to a stop at the Spokane International station in Sandpoint where 250 citizens of the small town were gathered. On hand was a squad of Civil War vets, veterans of the Spanish-American war, and Company “A” of the local militia. Something special was taking place. A door opened and out stepped a man dressed in a dark suit and wearing a top hat. The famous smile was spontaneous as the cheer of some 8,000 people rang out. This man standing on the train step was no ordinary person. He was a Nobel prize winner, a naval historian, a biographer, an essayist, a paleontologist, a taxidermist, an ornithologist, a naturalist, a conservationist, a big-game hunter, an editor, a critic, a rancher, an orator, a civil service reformer, a patron of the arts, a colonel of the cavalry, a former governor of New York, the ranking expert on big-game mammals in North America, and the 26th president of the United States. He was Teddy Roosevelt and he had come to spend the day in Sandpoint.

Automobiles were waiting and the party drove away from the railway station and stopped at what everyone in Sandpoint called Central School. It was located at 2nd Avenue and Main Street. In front of the school, Roosevelt saw 300 children waving American flags and the car transporting him stopped and he emerged to say a few words to the children. He told them, “I believe in work, and I believe in play, and I know your teachers will agree with me when I say, ‘When you play, play hard, and when you work, don’t play at all.’ ” Then it was back into the car and off to lunch.

In the afternoon, Roosevelt was escorted to the Sandpoint City Docks where Captain Ed Elliott met him. The party boarded a steamer (probably the Northern) for a ride around lake Pend Oreille. During the time on the lake, Roosevelt and Elliott spent some time discussing steamboats and Roosevelt, to his own delight and the delight of those around him, related shooting stories and his African experiences.

Later on in the day, extra seats were added in the Rink Opera House where people had gathered to hear Roosevelt speak. More than 1,000 additional people who were not fortunate enough to get a seat lined the walls. Roosevelt stood and silence prevailed in the hall. The quietness did not last long because Roosevelt shared about his trip to Sandpoint in 1888. He told about his trip up the Kootenai River to Bonners Ferry where they went on a corduroy road and their wagon upset. Laughter rang out as he continued, “Sandpoint had six or eight wooden buildings and everybody ate in a restaurant at one end of town. I got in bed in one of the wooden buildings (a cabin owned by Winfield Scott Monhart) and in the middle of the night the door was burst in and a gentleman (Monhart) came in who was not bigotedly sober. He announced he was going to bed with me and I explained with great courtesy and firmness that he was not. In time, I got him to take my view of the situation.” (Winfield Scott Monhart insisted that Teddy was mistaken, and that they did share the same bed.)

After the speech, the presidential entourage boarded the waiting automobiles for a short trip to the Northern Pacific depot. The crowds followed, and after a few brief farewells, the man who had won the hearts of the people of Sandpoint waved a farewell, and Teddy Roosevelt was on his way.