COEUR d’ALENE — Consider this.

Dorothy Dahlgren shares a home briefly in the Caribbean — the island nation of Curacao to be exact. Sunshine, sandy beaches, and warm tropical water.

But she always can’t wait to get back to her real home, even at this time of year.

“I’m just a North Idaho girl at heart,” she said, “and my Scandinavian background. I think there’s something in that. Snow and cold. It’s just part of my DNA.”

But there’s more to it than that.

Home for the 60-year-old is also the Museum of North Idaho on Northwest Boulevard, where she has served as director for 36 years.

It’s the house that Dorothy built and where she is hugged by a unique and rich history — the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Fort Sherman, steamboats and sawmills. This year is the 50th anniversary of the museum’s conception.

“I really enjoy my work and I feel a responsibility to the museum,” she said. “I’m good to take a week or two off for my sanity and rejuvenation. But I want to be in Coeur d’Alene.

“I love my mountains, and the lake and the trees.”

Her great-grandparents homesteaded on Coeur d’Alene Mountain in the 1880s and lived in a log cabin until they built a farm house in 1903.

She was born in Coeur d’Alene where she grew up on 18th Street, which was “just the best.”

“My childhood experiences were around that neighborhood. We played on Lakeview Hill,” she said. “We hiked around the hill to Sanders Beach. We rode our bikes all over the place.”

The Fourth of July was spent at City Park for a family picnic and an afternoon at Playland Pier.

“When I was little, there was the train that skirted along the waterfront,” she said. “When I was older there were the rides that went over the lake. That was scary.”

Summer days were also spent boating to waterfront resorts for picnics.

“You could just go down and sit at the beach — Eddyville, Squaw Bay, up at Harrison,” Dahlgren said. “My brother and I would have a grand old time swimming, and usually they’d have some kind of play things like slides or inner tubes to play on.

“Coeur d’Alene was quite a tourist town, especially in the summer. The town would just fill up with people, particularly Canadians when I was growing up. Things were really jumping. People were cruising Sherman and going to the park and hanging out there. Everything was downtown. The lumber mills were going. It was a real working-class town.”

Dahlgren’s parents divorced when she was 12 and she was shuffled around. She attended five different schools in the ninth grade and spent time in Wenatchee, Wash., picking apples when she was 14, as well as Spokane and Priest River.

She settled back in to the Lake City and graduated from Coeur d’Alene High School as an honors student in 1976.

Dahlgren attended North Idaho College for two years then transferred to the University of Idaho in general studies.

“I never really knew what I wanted to do,” she said. “I just loved taking a lot of different classes and learning about a lot of different things.”

As pressure mounted to declare a major, an item in the the U of I catalog caught her attention — museum studies.

“It was really appealing to me because I didn’t like the idea of sitting behind a desk all the time, but I didn’t like the idea of manual labor all the time either,” she said.

The museum has provided both for Dahlgren. She creates exhibits, catalogues artifacts and a library of more than 3,500 photos, and deals with the public as well as writing research papers and has co-authored two books.

Near graduation time, Dahlgren was resigned to go to “some horrible place” to find a job. She was gathering up resumes and letters of recommendation when her phone rang. Her professor from the U of I said a position was available at the North Idaho Museum in Coeur d’Alene.

Dahlgren interviewed, graduated on a Sunday and went to work the following day.

A friend introduced her to Bob Eagan, a local veterinarian. They dated and were married in 1985. They had a son, Ivan, who lives locally. Eagan passed away in 2004.

Dahlgren is right for the museum role though she is the first to admit she is a little “shy and isolated.”

But don’t be fooled. She fondly remembers summer evenings during high school cruising Sherman in a red, white and blue 1967 Chevelle.

And this is a girl who escapes to the Caribbean until duty calls.

Dahlgren, who describes herself as a jack of all trades and a master of none, has no immediate plans to leave the museum. In fact, she is trying to work a community-wide remedy to a perceived problem.

She believes the city is about to terminate its lease with the museum and she will be left looking for a new home. Dahlgren and her board are forming a development committee and are searching for an alternate location, preferably somewhere downtown to keep the drive alive.

“The community identity and culture are wrapped up in its history. Our past has shaped our future. The museum adds value to people’s lives,” she said. “We’re really the scrapbook of the community. It enriches people’s lives.

“We need to preserve that history and culture and the flavor of the community so we’re not just another strip mall somewhere.”