Paradise Center breaks ground for new building

Ten men and women gathered last week with shovels to break ground for the new "Paradise Center Roundhouse Shed," but they didn't do much more than turn a patch of dirt and pose for a picture.

The start of actual digging came three hours later, when Dave Colyer and Mac Hall, who were also part of the ceremony, brought in a leased front end loader to remove about four inches from the top layer of dirt to ready the site for crushed gravel.

The ceremonial dig included volunteer Shanna Miller, with Paradise Center board members Benita Jo Hanson, Kathleen Hubka, Jackie Colyer, Susan Lenore, Carol Brooker, Mac Hall, and Gin Weber, along with Dave Colyer, board president, John Thorson, board treasurer, and Karen Thorson, board secretary. A handful of spectators showed up for the ceremony where Colyer gave a brief history of the railroad in Paradise, the center, and the purpose of the future mini roundhouse.

"The Paradise Center, formerly known as the Paradise Elementary School, is now owned by Sanders County and leased long term to the nonprofit Paradise Center," said Colyer, a Paradise Elementary School student from 1962 to 1970. "We have completed major renovations in both buildings, developed numerous exhibits, and prepared this interpretative trail – all in an effort to serve the community, advance the arts and attract visitors to the center," said Colyer, who provided background on the center's projects since the organization took over the old schoolhouse in 2016.

Colyer and Hall worked about six hours Monday and Tuesday and hauled off about 18 dump truck loads of dirt from the roundhouse site. Hall said that the spot is marked and ready for foundation work. He said they first plan to lay down three-quarter crushed gravel. Requests for bids went out to 28 local contractors, but no decisions have been made. Colyer said they hope to begin construction at the start of May and be done in August.

The 1,500-square-foot building will be a five-bay mini roundhouse situated along the Paradise Center Walking Trail on the east end of the school grounds next to the playground. Each bay will be just over 21 feet long, about nine feet wide at the front, and 15 feet across the back. "It won't be a replica; it'll be more like an example of a roundhouse architecture from the 1880s," said John Thorson.

Volunteers have provided more than 100 of hours of labor to the project, including board member Rudi Boukal of Thompson Falls, who worked on the design of the building and will be creating the doors for the building, which will be used to exhibit items too large to display in the main building. One such item is a velocipede donated by Charles "Ole" and Jan Oelschlager. It had been used by the night watchmen to patrol the railroad yards in Paradise. John Thorson said the mini roundhouse will expand the center's program to protect and interpret Paradise's railroad history. The building will be fashioned with five modified pie shaped "stalls" that will illustrate five railroad themes - passenger rail service, mail service, freight, life and businesses in Paradise, and the tie-treating plant, according to Colyer, who worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad at the tie plant from 1974 to 1982, the year the plant burned down.

The Paradise Railroad Station had a real 20-bay roundhouse from 1907 to 1937, when it was torn down. Remnants of the roundhouse structure, located about a mile west of town, can still be seen, said Hanson, a former Paradise Center board member and author of the book "Milepost Zero," a history of the railroad in Paradise.

"When completed, this project will not only enable us to expand our display space for large railroad artifacts, it will enable visitors to experience railroad history in a realistic, experiential way. The roundhouse will visibly recreate a time-gone-by," said Karen Thorson.

A replica of the town of Paradise and the Northern Pacific Railroad is located on the main floor of the old schoolhouse and includes a detailed 62-inch long roundhouse built by Terry and Judi Christensen of Plains. It was installed last July.

The mini roundhouse is the result of a combination of grants and private donations, according to Karen Thorson, who wrote the initial grant for $31,000 from the Montana Office of Tourism. They also received over $45,000 in private donations and grants from the National Railroad Historic Society and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Foundation, but Thorson said they still need another $18,000 for the project. The schoolhouse building is on the National Historic Register. Board members plan to travel to Helena to attend this year's ceremony for new buildings added to the register.

Over the last year, the staff has been working on an "ambitious capital improvement" plan for the center, including the installation of a new heating and air conditioning system, new restrooms, and passenger elevator lifts in an effort to make the entire building ADA accessible, according to Colyer.

"Since January 2022 through March 2023, the Paradise Center paid local vendors approximately $158,000. Payment to Missoula-area vendors was an additional $75,000," said Colyer.