PRIEST RIVER - There's a story trapped inside this rambling, old hulk of a machine. Thousands of weathered matchsticks sit piled along the end of its conveyor belt, like words that ended mid-sentence while still falling off the tip of a tongue.

The conversation was truncated when the dryers, tumblers, rollers and conveyor of this contraption were disassembled and set aside. In nearly every dislocated section, lines of matchsticks hold their ranks, waiting to resume a parade that ended more than 75 years ago.

No metal patent labels or foundry stamps give a clue to where the machine came from, but a couple of local history buffs know for certain that it called the Idaho Panhandle home during the boom years of the timber trade.

"It was obviously fabricated somewhere, but we don't even know where or when," said Carl Wright, a retired U.S. Forest Service employee who now works with the Priest River Museum & Timber Education Center on projects ranging from displaying a 1909 steam engine to drumming up more information on the match machine. "It's a mystery machine."

"It was supposedly the only match-making machine that was ever in North Idaho," said Diane Mercer, who was a driving force in forming the museum in downtown Priest River.

After being stored for years in Coeur d'Alene, the parts were shipped north when Mercer was contacted by the DAW lumber mill and asked if the museum might be interested in the machine.

"I said 'yes' without even seeing it," Mercer said, adding that she knew the company that owned the match-making equipment had deep roots on the west side of Bonner County.

"It originally belonged to Diamond Match, and we suspect it was operated down in Coeur d'Alene or Post Falls," Wright added. "But there's a lot of history with Diamond Match and Diamond International right around here, too."

"Diamond was the biggest employer in our area in the 1940s and '50s, and they had camps all over Priest River and Priest Lake," Mercer said. "They were considered the most profitable mill around."

After months of research and combing the Internet for information on Diamond Match and Ohio Match, however, the museum still has no information on the piece of timber-manufacturing history that has fallen into their hands.

"We do know that the match stock came from Cusick, Wash., and then went on to Coeur d'Alene," said Wright. "And we know that the only thing they did around here was make the matchsticks themselves. They sent them back East to put the phosphorous match heads on."

The detective work is further complicated by the fact that the machinery might well have migrated back and forth across the Idaho-Washington border sometime during the Great Depression and World War II.

"It could even have been in Spokane, where Ohio Match was located, at some point," Wright explained. "It wasn't unusual for equipment to move between companies."

Whatever the point of origin and no matter where these travels took the equipment, its arrival in Priest River serves as a sort of homecoming for the match-making machine.

"It's up at the Tri-Pro mill right now, which is the former Diamond mill site," Mercer noted.

"And the best thing is that it still has matches inside it," Wright said.

The museum plans to construct an enclosed shed to preserve the machine. The sticking point, according to Wright, is that they also want to reassemble the parts and provide information on how they worked.

"We want to put up signs that say, 'This is how matches were made in this area,'" he said. "The problem is, we don't know of anyone who has any idea of how one of these things worked.

"This machine has a story to tell," he continued. "We just need to find that person out there who can help us tell it."

The Priest River Museum & Timber Education Center has invited anyone who might be familiar with the equipment to contact them by calling (208) 946-7937, or by email at: [email protected].