Historic bell rings again

PINEHURST — After two decades of silence, the bell atop the Pinehurst Community Bible Church will toll this Easter Sunday.

Around 40 years ago, the bell would ring consistently, marking the beginning of the church service, and then years after would be rung aperiodically or for special services. Eventually, the bell stopped working, and people stopped trying to even hear its toll.

“If you go back and look at Pinehurst history, the log church was one of the first main structures,” explained the church’s current Lead, Pastor Aaron Miller. “It’s a historic building, on the National Registry. There is that significance, and it’s also been the center of the town.”

Photos and records show that when the church was built, the bell was also a part of the structure, as the primary purpose of ringing church bells was to signify the time for worshippers to gather for a church service.

Around 40 years ago, it was reported that the continuous ringing of the bell on Sundays stopped due in part to the passing of the regular bell ringer and rumors of the structure around the bell being unstable.

The bell would be rung off and on, yet eventually stopped altogether.

Enter Mark Miller.

“I’ve been going to the church since before I was born, and I think the bell stopped ringing when I was around 8 years old,” Mark said. “We’ve been told rumors from many years from some of the older guys in the church that it’s going to be a big project, and it’s not really easy to get to, so nothing ever really got done.”

The bell is located on the top of the church, on a steeped roof, and rumors swirled that the wood surrounding it was rotted away.

“There’s a really steep pitched roof,” said Pastor Aaron. “What had always been told to us is that the timbers that supported the bell were rotting away, and being were afraid to pull the rope. People would try and pull it a couple of times, and nothing would happen.”

Mark enlisted the help of his coworker at the Lucky Friday Mill, Scott Marker explaining, “We were talking about it on graveyard, and he’s very capable about doing things like this. He’s also pretty fearless. I figured he would be the guy who would be able to assess the situation quickly and properly.”

Mark explained that the issue was found to be an older heavy leather belt, something like a horse logger would have used, that was nailed into the framework to try and prevent the bell from moving too far. Once the belt was removed, the bell was able to be rung again.

The two also found some details on the bell, like a big 32 on the top of it,

“It’s a 32, which means it’s 32 inches across the bottom. We are still doing some research to get some more information,” Mark said. “It’s really hard to get in there but now that we know how to do it, we will make it up in there more and try and do some cleaning and find out the exact manufacture date.”

The church, previously named the Pine Creek Baptist Church, is steeped in history – from its design to the people designing and building it.

It was designed with a nostalgic log cabin revival style in 1932 by the architectural firm Tourtellote & Hummel — the architects designed many buildings throughout Idaho and Oregon, including the Egyptian Theater, St. John’s Cathedral, the Boise Carnegie Library and the Idaho State Capitol building.

The church is built with full dove-tail joints, which have a trapezoidal shape, at the corners of the log walls, and was nominated and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

The nomination for the structure explained, “The church is architecturally significant as the only genuine log structure in the group and as an excellent (and in several ways unusual) example of the nostalgic revival of the log cabin in the 1930s.”

A previous pastor for the church attributed the construction of the building to Finnish miners who attended the congregation and explained that it also resembles a log building that was inventoried in areas of a Finish farm settlement in Idaho.

The bell will be rang on Easter Sunday, around 11 a.m. to signify the beginning of the service by one of its repairman, Mark.

The church is located at 210 Main St. in Pinehurst.

“If you don’t already have a church, come visit on Easter Sunday and come hear the bell for the first time in decades,” Pastor Aaron said.