Town Of Buckeye Still Lives On In Photographs And Memories

Kay Ringo, a softspoken grandmother with warm eyes and a shy smile, has saved a town.

Never mind that there’s just her house, a vacant building across the street, and a few vague outlines of foundations to prove that the town of Buckeye ever existed. Not a single sign marks its location 15 miles north of Spokane, off Highway 2 near the Little Spokane River.

But Ringo has photographs that show a bustling turn-of-the century logging town, cozy homes, and the people who lived there.

She’s captured the story of Buckeye in a book, “The Milltown Buckeye, Washington,” now in its third printing.

Buckeye was all but forgotten when Ringo moved there in 1961. On morning walks, she began noticing old building foundations in the grass-covered fields.

“I thought, if I don’t do something, no one will ever know there was such a place,” said Ringo.

Her curiosity on fire, she spent every free moment searching for records of the community and its people.

She scoured dusty shelves at the Spokane County Courthouse, pored over record books in the Federal Building, searched through U.S. Post Office logs, and all but lived at the Spokane Public Library.

Each time she found another piece to the puzzle a clearer picture of Buckeye emerged.

But the community really came back to life for her when she found folks who once lived there.

“Interviewing people was fascinating,” she said. “All of them were very proud to be associated with Buckeye.”

Listening to her stories, you can almost smell the smoke billowing from the mill’s smokestacks, hear the buzzing saws and the screeching factory whistle that called workers in the morning and sent them home at night.

“Their lives were guided by that whistle,” she said.

Her own home was built in 1898 by Merton and Leila Austin, who raised their family in Buckeye.

When she interviewed their son, C. Leslie Austin, he gave her a picture of his parents as a young couple, sitting on the porch of their house, apparently just back from a bike ride.

She found Orley D. Armstrong through a clerk at the Colbert Post Office. He grew up in Buckeye, and his vivid memories gave her a window to the past.

She walks through the empty fields and sees the town’s butcher shop, schoolhouse, general store. There were no saloons - and no church, she notes.

A two-car train known as the “Dinky” went through Buckeye twice a day. You could set your watch by it, but it stopped only if a passenger flagged it down.

There were also dances, meetings, book readings and socials. “Edison’s talking machine had been invented and they listened to records,” she said.

Along with the good times, there were also tragedy: A housefire that took a life, accidental drownings, diptheria and smallpox.

And then there was the murder-suicide that stunned the town. Ringo hints that she knows the details, but refuses to indulge in gossip.

Now that she’s saved a town, Ringo asks others to preserve proof of their own lives.

“I found out that dates and numbers don’t really matter, it’s the little things that people do that count.

“Our history isn’t being recorded any more. We don’t write as many personal letters. Our local history isn’t being recorded by the newspapers,” she said.

She encourages families to write their own histories.

“There’s no record of our day-to-day life, and that bothers me a lot,”she said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo