Sunday, April 8, 2007

Three Toots Tavern and Gibbs Tavern: A Brief Pictorial History

I discovered about two months ago that one of my students, Penny, is the granddaughter of one of the proprietors of Three Toots Tavern, now gone, but which sat at the bottom of the Page road on the old highway 10 between Smelterville and Pinehurst. Her name was Hazel Russel/Barker. Her son, James Gilbert, ran the tavern. Three Toots was theirs from about 1948-1953.

Hazel also bought a tavern in Cd'A, whose name I can't recall, but she renamed it Gibbs Tavern. Many North Idaho residents remember this tavern well. Here are three pictures of Toots Tavern. Hazel is standing on the tavern porch in the first one.

The fourth picture is an interior shot of Gibbs Tavern. It's a picture of Hazel and her husband at the time, Russ.




Here's a more recent picture of Gibbs. Coeur d'Alene Fire Department personnel stand in front of it during a fire training and demolition burn.


3 comments:

Christy Woolum said...

It still amazes me we never heard any stories about the Three Toots. Good post!

Carol Woolum Roberts said...

Kept waiting to see the Three Toots pics. Nice.

Anonymous said...

What great pictures!
My father was a firefighter for over forty years. He fought the fire at Three Toots and it was the only time as a firefighter he was seriously hurt. They were worried about the underground fuel tank. Since wood smoulders for so long, the next day he was back for what they called "mop up." A (large) tree limb that had burned almost completely off came down, dented his fire hat as it knocked him unconscious and won him a trip to the West Shoshone General Hospital. He spent the night, and was treated for a concussion and smoke inhalation.
(His fire buddies brought the limb to our house where it sat in the garage as a trophy until the joke got stale).