Last December, the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho won the bid to purchase the old Boundary County School District office. But before the Tribe agrees to finalize the deal, U.S. Congress must abandon an imaginary alleyway.

The building on Oak Street is in a section of Bonners Ferry called the Eaton Addition, which was platted prior to Idaho’s statehood under the Townsite Act of 1867, a federal initiative to allow early American West settlers the ability to claim legal title over pieces of the frontier. 

Since then, the act has not been repealed or amended, so neither the state nor local governments have been vested with authority to change the original plat. 

According to the original plat map, a few alleyways run through the district office building. Even though no such alleyways exist, the federal government technically owns those strips of land, and only it has the ability to vacate the alleyway, or any others in the neighborhoods of the Eaton Addition. 

“When I found out, I thought you've got to be kidding me. I thought it was a joke,” said BCSD Superintendent Jan Bayer, who unsealed the Tribe’s winning bid of $611,601 last year. “When that building was built, there was nobody watching whether you could build there or not.” 

Due to the encumbrance of only partially owning the old district office plat, the Kootenai Tribe has decided not to finalize the purchase and sale agreement until those alleyways are abandoned. 

But the process for returning the land use rights to the city isn’t entirely clear, said Boundary County Prosecuting Attorney Andrakay Pluid. 

For now, the school district and the Tribe hope the repealed Eaton townsite is a trailer bill that gets slapped onto the end of any existing piece of legislation in Washington. 

The process to repeal the act has stalled for several months after Bayer sent a request to all members of Congress from Idaho on Jan. 15. But in a recent development, the request was passed through to the Congressional Research Service on July 15. 

“Everybody is doing all they can,” Bayer said. "The Kootenai Tribe and Andrakay have been absolutely wonderful working with us. This doesn’t just impact the school district, it affects every property owner in that neighborhood.” 

Bonners Ferry City Administrator Mike Klaus said it makes sense for the city to have governing authority over the Eaton Addition since it is within city limits. 

“It seems like in early America the federal government was trying to set up these townsites out West, knowing there were limited resources at the time,” he said. “Now that we have a city, we would just like to have the ability to make any changes needed to the rights of way and any other land use decisions.”