From the ashes: Noxon faces uncertain future

Kevin Johnson sidles up to the stretch of countertop by the entrance to his Noxon store and flashes a friendly, but tight smile. He knows what’s coming; he’s heard the questions before about the town's future — from neighbors, customers and friends.  

“If I had a quarter for every time somebody said what do you think is going to happen with the town I probably could have rebuilt the store twice," he said on a Friday morning in mid-September last year.  

Johnson Hardware sits across Broadway Street from the grassy, vacant lots and concrete pad where the bulk of Noxon’s business district once stood. A fire consumed the block of Noxon Avenue on Feb. 27, 2024. Lost was the Angry Beaver General Store, the Mercantile and Cafe, and Toby’s Tavern, a storied bar in a more than 100-year-old building. Gone was the place for last-minute groceries, the dinner date spot, the community center, the history museum.  

Johnson, who lives above town, rushed down in the early morning dark with his wife, Laura, to keep an eye on their store and help out as firefighters from Noxon, Trout Creek and Heron fought back against the flames.  

But there wasn’t much for them to do except watch. Everything is about to change, Johnson thought then.  

“Even today, it’s still different,” he says. “You got a quiet feel to town.”  

Noxon is an unincorporated cluster of buildings on the far side of the Clark Fork River from Montana 200, the thin stretch of wild highway that follows the water from the Flathead River in Dixon up into Idaho. It’s home to about 255 people, a post office, fire district building, senior center and the Noxon School District, where kids from the neighboring communities attend classes. It’s the type of town where people take many roles — the fire chief oversees the school buses, the paramedic manning the ambulance builds homes and the owner of the hardware store once chaired the school board.   

It’s the kind of place where things don’t change much until all at once they do.   

“I went through fourth grade all the way through high school [here], and you always had your store, you always had Toby’s,” said Laura Johnson. “It was just you always had those businesses there. There have been some that have come and gone obviously, but those were kind of your stable things, those were always going to be there."  

The town was still coming to grips with the fire when a second blow landed: the closure of the Noxon Bridge on July 12.  After inspectors found cracks in several of the bridge’s trusses, Montana Department of Transportation officials issued an emergency order banning traffic from the span, which connects Noxon to Montana 200.  

Roadblocks went up and emergency vehicles were rerouted across the top of the Noxon Dam. For regular people, getting out of town meant roughing it on miles of little-used backroads connecting Noxon to Heron and the highway.   

The closure only lasted a few days while work crews figured out a temporary fix. There’s only one long-term solution: replacing the 102-year-old bridge completely.  

It dampened spirits after what was, by most accounts, one of the best Fourth of July celebrations Noxon had pulled off in anyone’s memory.  The town had gone overboard, in part to show it was still standing despite the fire. 

Now the future seemed unsure again. 

“That was another kick in the gut,” Kevin Johnson says. 

IT IS just past 5 p.m. A pickup is parked alongside the grass-covered lots where Toby’s Tavern, the Mercantile and Cafe, and Angry Beaver General Store stood before the Feb. 27 fire. Noxon Avenue, damp from needed rain, is otherwise empty. It’s quiet outside the trailer that now houses the general store.  

A short way down the road, Chief Jim Byler flips on the fluorescent lights in the main room of the rural fire district’s meeting hall. A wiry, bearded man, Byler talks excitedly about how the community came together over the Fourth of July and plans to spread cheer during the impending holiday season. But sadness and frustration creep in when the conversation turns to Noxon’s future. Questions about how the town has fared since the fire and bridge closure almost immediately elicit speculation — some hopeful, some fearful — about what lies ahead.  

“Have you been downtown? There wasn’t much to see,” he says in a voice that sounds like gravel crunching.  

He worries that the county, which is responsible for the Noxon Bridge, will be unable or unwilling to find the millions of dollars needed to replace it. Even he can’t see the sense in it after the fire.  

Sure, Noxon still has the school. But that’s about it, Byler says. 

“I don’t think they’re going to push for the bridge because there’s no town here really for them to spend that kind of money,” he says. “I think they’re just going to drag their feet. I mean, there’s no town for them here. And everybody’s pretty much given up.” 

Byler moved around before returning to Sanders County later in life. Even a rural Appalachian town has a store, he says.  

He used to drop by the Angry Beaver for snacks before a fire district meeting. Now they go without, Byler says.  

He worries about the town’s older residents, who relied on the businesses. Shopping means going to Sandpoint, Idaho these days. And a meal with friends is a 15-mile drive to Trout Creek.  

Byler also worries that people will get used to leaving town. Before the storefronts burned, a trip to the general store might include a stop at Johnson Hardware. A meal at the Mercantile and Cafe could lead someone into the general store or on to a drink at Toby’s.  

“Now that’s all you have is a hardware, nothing to eat,” he says before trying to put himself in the shoes of someone planning a shopping trip: “Well, let’s go to Sandpoint then. We can do it all.” 

Seated across a plastic folding table from Byler, fellow firefighter Samuel Overman remembers the Mercantile and Cafe being a draw for Noxon. There are fewer reasons to visit now, he says.  

“My wife used to like to go to mercantile to eat, right? Quite often,” Overman says. “And I'm like, ‘Let’s go to Noxon’ and she’s like, ‘There’s nothing in Noxon for me now, I don’t want to go to Noxon.’ I’m sure there’s hundreds of people like that.”   

Although the owner of the Angry Beaver, who declined interview requests, relocated the store to a temporary trailer on Noxon Avenue, the business was listed for sale in the late summer.  

“It’s struggling,” Jenny Byler says of Noxon. “It will struggle even more when [the Angry Beaver] closes down. When the store is gone, it will struggle a lot more, like it did before [the store] came.” 

“We’re in bad need of a good restaurant and good general store and a good, like, restaurant-bar,” Overman says.   

But that will require outside money, in Jim Byler’s estimation. He knows of only a few people in the area who could make that kind of investment.  

People are getting used to a quieter Noxon in the meantime.  

“I think they just adjusted to it,” he says. “This is it.” 

ALONG THAT stretch of Montana 200, where hamlets are strung out between expanses of forest and the rugged southern end of the Cabinet Mountains, places like Toby’s are sinews for a larger community.  

“This chain of little towns is just like any chain of little towns -- your bars or your supper clubs are your social centers,” says Billy Hill, a lifelong resident of Sanders County, celebrated outfitter and occasional candidate for elected office. “If you’re in the outlying areas, if you want to break the monotony, this is where you come to shoot pool, have a beer ... see your friends or whatever.” 

Like Byler, Hill thinks of the older residents in Noxon who can’t as easily get out. Although in his 70s, he still drives his pickup down from his lodge for a night of dancing or a hearty breakfast the next morning. 

“They perform a service, and this is the part that Noxon lost,” he adds. 

Walking into the Hereford Bar and Grill, a gambrel-roofed building nestled between cedars about 4 miles west of Noxon, Hill is greeted with friendly waves from the patrons perched on half dozen chairs jammed together along a short bar opposite the front door. It’s late afternoon and there isn’t an open seat at the bar though a handful of tables squeezed between blinking casino games sit empty.  

Laughter runs around the room like electricity as the conversation jumps from hunting trips to business disputes and rumors of lawsuits. Those leaving must run a gauntlet of hugs and backslaps to the door. Some get a little ribbing along the way. 

"In these mountains, when you come out of the mountains, you’ve gotta have some place,” Hill says.    

The Hereford had sat empty for several years when owner Kim Syth bought it in 2018. Although it took two years to throw open the doors again, people flocked to it, she says. They did brisk business until fire consumed the main building in December 2020. 

“So it was start over again,” Syth recalls. 

With some money from insurance and a loan, she began rebuilding. Though the new Hereford was unfinished, they relaunched in December 2021 to hold onto their liquor license.  

Those first few days patrons had to relieve themselves in a portable toilet. The building, still under construction, was drafty and they put up tarps to trap the heat in, Syth recalls. But no one complained and business kept growing — until January 2024, when a second fire reduced the Hereford to ashes again. The loss was devastating, Syth says, but not insurmountable.  

“The community supports us,” she says. “The community is behind us 100%. They want us to rebuild.” 

These days, the Hereford operates out of a surviving clapboard building with a dirt parking area that leads up to cement steps. Although it had a previous run as a bar — which eased the process of converting it — it was most recently used to store fireworks, Syth says. She or one of her adult children cook meal orders in an adjacent trailer. It’s a temporary fix.  

“I won’t let it go. I’m already in the process to rebuild," she says while her daughter minds the bar behind her. “That’s right. I’m rebuilding; the Hereford is still here. This isn’t where I want to be, but it’s working.”  

When the conversation turns back to Noxon, Syth's face tightens. Her heart goes out to them, particularly Gail Therrian, Toby’s daughter and the owner of the eponymous tavern.  

“It was like losing her father all over again, all her childhood memories and I know she’s having a hard time coming back,” Syth says.  

Some have taken to calling Noxon “Tombstone,” she says, determined to prove the nickname wrong. 

“Because they don’t think that we can come back,” Syth says. "No, we’re coming back.” 

IT’S JUST about noon and the patrons of Johnson Hardware move purposely through the narrow aisles. Friendly conversation breaks out as familiar faces come into focus between pegboards laden with tools and portable heaters on display ahead of hunting season.  

For Hill, dropping by the store results in a chance meeting with Doug Horner, a stout man in a dirtied green baseball cap emblazoned with the OrePac logo. A builder, Horner is scanning the rows with a pencil shoved into a side panel, eraser end out when he bumps into Hill.  

Catching up, they lament the loss of Noxon’s communal spaces. Austin Johnson, one of Kevin and Laura Johnson’s two twentysomething sons, is listening from the counter where he mans the cash register.  

“Go to a football game,” he says to the two men with a smile and a shake of the head. “Go to a volleyball game.” 

“Where do you go for a steak? Where do you dance? Where do you meet a girl?” Hill shoots back. 

“Can’t even sit down and get a cup of coffee,” Horner says.  

Later, Horner ticks through the staples of small-town life that Noxon is missing. 

“One thing we’ve been missing for a long time is a cafe. That was a place the old boys would get together,” he says. “A place to take your family. A cafe or restaurant-type deal. A store that is stocked with all these necessities.” 

Hill mentions the gas station out on the highway. “But there’s nowhere to sit down,” he admits.   

“That’s why we’re standing in the corner of a hardware store,” Horner replies. 

Austin and his brother Aaron, both of whom work at Johnson Hardware, are more sanguine about Noxon’s prospects, though they acknowledge the town’s troubles. The fire was a tragedy, they say, particularly the loss of Toby’s. The temporary closure of the bridge was another hit. It’s a new normal and not everything has accepted it yet.  

“It’s a small town and people are used to going where they want to go,” Austin says. “They’re used to the bar being there. ... They want life to be normal again.” 

But you don’t need a tavern or a store or a cafe to create a community. Austin brings up the Fourth of July celebrations, the concerts the town puts on in Pilgrim Park.  

“If people want to hang out, they’re going to hang out,” he says. “The community is still going to come together.” 

“EVERYONE WANTS to speculate,” says Kevin Johnson. “I just can’t. I can’t go there.” 

Austin and Aaron joke that their father is Noxon’s unofficial mayor. Some days he likes it better than others, they say.  

Johnson expects that’s the result of being a longtime business owner — he bought the store in the 1990s — and nine years on the school board, six of them as chair. People know him. When the bridge went down in July, one of the first phone calls he got was from a county commissioner who put him in touch with officials at the state Department of Transportation. 

But that also means a lot of people want him to predict Noxon’s future.  

Johnson recognizes that it's because they care. They care about his opinion, and they care about the town. He imagines he’ll keep fielding those kinds of questions until he hands off ownership of the hardware store, which means he has maybe 20 more years of it. 

But when he looks across at the vacant lots, he sees private property. It’s not his business. 

“And really, what I think about what’s going to happen down here doesn’t matter because it’s someone else’s property,” he says.  

Word around town in September was that someone — a local — was working to buy all three lots on Noxon Avenue. If Johnson had heard of it, he was keeping mum.  

“We’ll have to wait and see what time holds out for,” he says. “We're very hopeful. We would like to see the town rebuild.” 

Talking about what others want to see happen in town comes more easily. Most want to see it return to the way it was.  

“People are hopeful. They really envision it being similar to what it was: A bar, a grocery store and a restaurant,” Johnson says. “That's really what people would like to see there.” 

In the meantime, he’ll likely continue to watch the groups of motorcycles come roaring off Montana 200 and into town. You can hear them coming from a ways off, he says. 

“They come down, they circle turn around and go back out and I know exactly what they were doing. They were coming out to stop at the bar, have a beer, burger and go,” Johnson says. “We’ve only had a couple of them pull in here, that have said ‘Hey, we’ve been on this ride before and where is that restaurant at? Where’s that bar at?’”

    The school building in Noxon on Wednesday, Oct. 9. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Kevin Johnson, co-owner of Johnson Hardware, stacks lumber at the store in Noxon on Wednesday, Oct. 9. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    The Noxon Bridge over the Clark Fork River in Noxon on Wednesday, Oct. 9. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    A sign for the former Hereford Bar & Grill outside the current establishment, center, near Noxon on Wednesday, Oct. 9. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Kim Syth, owner of the Hereford Bar & Grill near Noxon on Wednesday, Oct. 9. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider