COEUR d'ALENE - It's a piece of history without a home.

For more than a year Museum of North Idaho Director Dorothy Dahlgren has been looking for a new locale to house a 10-ton turbine engine built in the 1910s.

The massive engine used to power the Northwest Timber Company where Riverstone is today, and has been on display outside the Fort Sherman Museum at North Idaho College since the 1980s.

The college, however, is remodeling the Fort Sherman site, and the Museum of North Idaho doesn't have room to take in the rusty relic.

"I'm at wit's end," Dahlgren said, on trying to find a home for the 21-foot-by-8-foot turbine.

She has been looking for a new home since fall of 2010, after the college notified her of its plan to reconfigure Fort Sherman.

If she can't find one, the turbine could be headed for the scrap yard.

"I'm very hesitant to sell it for scraps," Dahlgren said. "It's a piece of our history."

Built by Allis Chalmers, it would net less than $2,000 if it sold for scrap.

It's a condensing turbine that used to be connected to a 1,500 kilowatt generator, which is now missing, said Matt Janssen, who specializes in turbines and engines through his business Vapor Locomotive in Sandpoint. He looked at the turbine Monday. As it doesn't function, he said its value is largely historical.

"I'd like to tell you I have a home for it," he told Dahlgren. "But I do not know of one."

The turbine's former worksite, Riverstone, has morphed into a mixed use development of condos, retails shops and parks. The city's parks department turned down using the turbine in the park at Riverstone, saying the 5-acre spot is too small for anything other than public outdoor recreation.

NIC, meanwhile, is refurbishing the inside of the Powder House at the Fort Sherman site, and the museum's pieces don't fit the reconfiguration plan, which is geared toward Native American and Fort Sherman history. A part of the plan calls for where the museum's turbine sits, outside the building, to be a landscaped spot where students gather.

It wants to have that project done by June, before NIC President Priscilla Bell retires, said Ron Dorn, NIC vice president for resource management.

The museum's 4,000 square feet of shed storage off Northwest Boulevard is full, and plans for a new museum are too preliminary at this point. In fact, the museum has hundreds of duplicate pieces it is looking to get rid of, but it's the turbine it wants to spare, if it can. Even if the museum can't keep the turbine itself, so long as it has a home somewhere and doesn't have to be scrapped would be the museum's main goal, Dahlgren said.

"Ultimately, we have to find a spot for these things," she said.