Three years ago last March, a living-room-sized boulder rolled off a mountainside and into the ferry terminal parking lot.
The boulder wasn’t just big, it was preposterously big. At the sight of it, people either laughed or swore. Smooth and rounded at its edges like a giant beach pebble, it resembled something drawn by an animator of the old Flintstones TV show, and nothing like you’d ever seen in person.
People who saw it were awed by it. They stood beside it to have their pictures taken. They showed it off to their friends.
But just as people started thinking of uses for the giant, natural rock – a sign for the ferry terminal, an attraction at Lookout Park – the state Department of Transportation blew it up, smashed it into pieces, and carted it off.
A year or so later, I passed the Glenwood School, an elementary school in Pennsylvania where a rock perhaps one-tenth the size of the ferry boulder has been used as a roadside sign for the past 50 years.
The boulder required zero maintenance and, as a landmark, couldn’t be overlooked.
“Blowing up the boulder” is a good metaphor for our failure to recognize an asset before it’s too late.
It’s something we do in Haines too often.
We blew up the boulder in 2011 when the Haines Borough demolished the old elementary school gym. There was nothing wrong with the gym. Unlike the brand new, $17 million school, its roof didn’t leak. It contained a hardwood-floor basketball court and a stage.
It offered a third gym to a school district that often juggles to find room for its basketball, volleyball, wrestling and cheerleading teams. Or it could have become a recreation center for a group that sought it for that purpose. An old school gym in Skagway had been renovated into the town’s recreation hall, with a climbing wall, exercise machines, billiards and ping-pong.
Best of all, the old gym was right downtown on Main Street at Third Avenue.
The borough manager at the time, Mark Earnest, wasn’t impressed with the building. He said we could build a new, borough recreation center even larger and nicer than the old gym. Though several old-timers in town knew that would never happen and testified to save the building, key assembly members bought Earnest’s whopper, and the assembly voted to tear the gym down.
Today it’s an empty lot.
We blew up the boulder again with the recent sale of the town’s Zamboni for $100. The Zamboni was a gift the town got virtually for free from Haines Junction. (Fisherman Gregg Bigsby donated some salmon for it.)
The Zamboni came down Main Street to cheers on the Fourth of July 2016, when Haines Junction Mayor Mike Crawshay gave the machine’s ignition key to Mayor Jan Hill at a public ceremony at the Fort Seward parade ground.
But the town never built a heated shed for the Zamboni and a few attempts to use it on the rough rink at the fairgrounds flopped. As the Zamboni apparently came with no title document, it was never clear if the machine belonged to the town, to the ice-skating club or to someone else.
In February, a few skaters decided to sell the machine to someone’s friend in Fairbanks for parts. Haines Borough facilities director Brad Ryan was at the center of that decision and the story of the Zamboni’s departure was never publicly told.
The value of the Zamboni and its rightful ownership can be debated, but this can’t: It’s the only Zamboni we’ll own for the foreseeable future, just as the old gym was the only rec center the Haines Borough ever had a chance at.
Now Doc Jones wants to sell his golf course. A group of residents has formed, in coordination with Takshanuk Watershed Council, to see about keeping the 150-acre property in community use. Jones wants $1.4 million for the beautiful, riverside facility and adjoining acreage used by local golfers, walkers, and skiers.
As in the case of the old gym and the Zamboni, some people will scoff at the idea of the community taking over the golf course. But a nonprofit in Wrangell has operated a 9-hole golf course there for 20 years. And a nonprofit in Cordova operates a community ski hill, featuring a chairlift.
Cordova and Wrangell are almost identical in population to Haines. The Valley of the Eagles golf course property provides unparalleled recreation to local residents. Can we put together a funding scheme – private, public or nonprofit – to save this gem?
Or will we again blow up the boulder?
A small group of residents hoping to keep the golf course property in community use will be meeting again this summer. Stay posted for the date. If recreation there is important to you, your family and children, show up at the meeting and see how you can help.