OAKLEY, IDAHO — Standing in front of the old Oakley Opera House, Marge Woodhouse spoke of the rich history of this Idaho community where residents still value the arts, hard work and Latter-day Saint teachings.
"It hasn't changed much over the years," said Sister Woodhouse, a retired teacher. "The Church and the school are the center of the community here."
Located between the Oregon and California Trails in south central Idaho, Oakley sits in the heart of the Goose Creek Valley. The pioneer community still has poplar-lined streets, picket fences, beautiful historic homes, and more than 90 percent of its residents are Latter-day Saints.
"You can go anywhere in the world and you will meet someone who knows someone from Oakley," she said.
Driving through her town — one of the oldest settlements in Idaho — she and her husband, Erik Woodhouse, point out historic buildings: The old hotel is now a renovated home and the city offices are now located in a bank building constructed in 1910. Next door to the former bank is the site of the old jail. The historic homes have such thick walls that there is silence inside, they say, lauding the pioneer work ethic that is still part of the area today.
"There is a lot of significant Church history here," she said.
Sister Woodhouse said the town was named after William Oakley, who started the Oakley Meadows stage station 2.5 miles west and 1 mile north of the present city. The station divided the distance between Salt Lake City and Boise around 1869 or 1870.
"Other settlers discovered the valley in the 1870s," she continued.
B.P. Howells arrived as a 12-year-old child in 1875, for example, and became a prominent citizen and the first prosecuting attorney of Cassia County, said Sister Woodhouse, citing A History of Oakley, Idaho, as Chronicled by the Oakley Herald Editor Charlie Brown, by Kent Hale. B.P. Howells would build the famous Opera House, where locals still put on four productions a year.
Latter-day Saint settlers arrived in Oakley from Grantsville, Utah, in 1878. The Dayley, Cummins, Severe and Martindale families — names still woven into the fabric of this small community — were the first.
By 1882 there were enough Church members in the valley to form a ward. Horton David Haight — the late Elder David B. Haight's grandfather — was called as bishop.
In the early 1900s, settlers constructed what was then "the largest earth filled dam in the world."
"Water is very important here," explained Sister Woodhouse.
The dam, farming, and a silver mine brought more people to the area. "Oakley became the cultural center and Church center between Salt Lake and Boise," she said. "Oakley was known."
Sister Woodhouse said the small community had every business: doctors, lawyers, blacksmiths and even a car dealership.
But the Great Depression and a series of fires in the 1930s in the heart of the community devastated Oakley and people began to move away. Then the mine closed. And construction on the dam completed. Jobs dried up.
Today, however, Oakley is known for another commodity: stone.
"There is no stone like this anywhere else in the world," said Oakley Idaho Stake President W. Gary Whiteley, noting that Oakley stone has been shipped to faraway locations in Belgium and Japan.
President Whiteley's grandfather was living in Utah when Church leaders called him in 1909 to move to Oakley and serve as stake clerk.
He packed up and moved for what he thought would be a one-year call, recalled President Whiteley. "Fifty-two years later he was released."
Oakley has a rich heritage of sacrifice and faith, he said. But it is modern history that has most-recently defined the small community.
In 1984, it became apparent that the reservoir in Goose Creek valley was going to flood. When locals determined the answer to the problem lay in the construction of a 22-mile-canal to the Snake River, they didn't wait for the government. They went to work.
"They dug the canal from here to Burley in three days," recalled President Whiteley. "The local people bonded together. A lot of them lost farmland."
President Whiteley heard later that the federal government was amazed that a bunch of farmers saved their community in three days by building a canal with tractors.
It was those same farmers that drove their tractors to Rexburg, Idaho, after the Teton Dam broke in 1976.
"There are unique people here," President Whiteley said.
Today Oakley residents are working to preserve their rich heritage and historic homes. A museum on Main Street recreates much of Oakley's past. And locals gather each summer for a walking tour of the city's historic homes.
Really, Sister Woodhouse says again, "the community hasn't changed that much over the years."
E-mail: sarah@desnews.com
