Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A Kingston Pirates' life for me
Courtesy images/ Outside of the front of Kingston High School on a snowy winter’s day during its active years.
The three buildings of the Kingston School District. On the far left is the gymnasium (or The Crackerbox), in the center against the hillside is Kingston Elementary School, and on the far right is Kingston High School. The field in the foreground is where the Kingston Pirates played their football games.
The Kingston High School Class of 1952. Pictured third row (fourth from the left) is Ernest “Carl” Ecklund and (thrid from the right) is fellow Kingston Kid Marvin Lake.
KINGSTON – Avast! 'n listen while I tell ye th' tale o' th' Kingston High School!
Or something to that effect...
In honor of National Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 19), the Shoshone News-Press decided to reach out to some of our local pirates- Kingston Pirates that is.
We will be talking about Pirates, not like them.
Many don’t know much about the school that closed more than 60 years ago, but for the few that can still remember, their blood still runs Green and Grey.
In the early days of the 20th Century, as many people began flocking to Shoshone County and settling in the various surrounding areas, it became apparent that there was a need for a school between Kellogg and Rose Lake.
Built in 1929 and opened in 1930, Kingston High School was constructed by the The Works Progress Administration (commonly referred to as the WPA), an American New Deal agency that, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, employed millions of job-seekers (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads.
Kingston High School was built to facilitate the students from up the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River, as well as the many gulches and surrounding farmlands.
Operating as combined a Jr./Sr. High School, the building facilitated hundreds of students during its 25 year lifespan before closing in 1955.
While the school only lives on now in memory, that doesn’t stop those who attended from getting together and reminiscing.
Each week a group of Kingston High grads get together at the Rose Lake Restaurant for lunch (or the Kingston Kids as they have come to be known) and fondly look back at their time at KHS.
Ernest “Carl” Ecklund, a 1952 graduate who now lives in St. Maries with his wife and fellow KHS graduate Myra (class of ‘54), can remember when the football team made the jump from 6-man football to 8-man football and what it was like on the gridiron as a Pirate.
“We played on an alfalfa field right next to the school,” Ecklund said. “One of the guys who owned a field would mow it for us and we got to play on the stubble.”
Certain aspects of student life are fuzzy and unfortunately lost to time, but the Kingston Kids can still remember some of the more unique memories they have from their time.
Kingston, like many areas, was a bedroom district for the mining communities, so if you weren’t a farmer then you probably worked in one of the many mines in the area.
Many of these miners grabbed rides on a bus service to make the back and forth more efficient. After these buses dropped the miners off for work, they would pick the KHS students up.
“We rode the Emery Bus Line to school every day,” Ecklund said. “Each morning they would pick us up after they dropped the miners off at work. We would have every seat at least 2-deep with kids and then we would have a line of kids standing in the middle aisle from the back door up to the steps of the bus.”
The Kingston School District had a gymnasium where they held sporting events like basketball, but due to its relatively small size and low ceilings it became known as “the Crackerbox.”
“People had to adjust their shots, because if they put too much arc on them it would hit the ceiling and be out-of-bounds,” Ecklund said with a chuckle. “Most folks didn’t like coming there to play.”
Ecklund believes that there were less than 1,000 students who graduated from Kingston High School, although the school maintained steady enrollment numbers during its existence.
At the midway point of the century, with the growth of Kellogg and at the height of the Bunker Hill Mine’s production, Kellogg began building a high school that was designed to facilitate all of the students from Kellogg and the surrounding communities.
The Kingston School District on the other hand was very poor as it had no industry around to sustain itself with, which lead to its closure and the consolidation of the two districts.
“Kellogg had the money because they had Bunker Hill,” Eileen Jenicek-Weeks said.
Jenicek a 1948 graduate, spoke about how the communities reacted to the consolidation and how it wasn’t very popular among the students.
“Some of the kids quit school,” she said. “The Kellogg kids were so ornery, and some of them didn’t want the Kingston kids up there with them and they would beat them up.”
While the initial blending of students may have been contentious, after some time it cooled off and the two different KHS-es became one KHS.
Over the years, the students of the Kingston School District and specifically Kingston High School have continued to hold yearly reunions, but with each year those numbers grow smaller.
But that doesn’t stop groups like the Kingston Kids from getting together and celebrating their time as Pirates.
“If you’re wondering how our time was at Kingston High School,” Myra Ecklund asked, “it was wonderful. We loved our school and enjoyed every second that we were able to attend it.”
The original Kingston High School building still stands today at its original home along Riverview Dr. (Old Kingston Highway) in Kingston and has been renovated in the past with private party funds.