Weiser’s historical residence Walking Tour set for May 7

The Weiser Historical Residential District Walking Tour is scheduled for Saturday, May 7.  

 Sponsored by the Weiser Architectural Preservation Committee (WAPC), the tour will begin and end at the Weiser Public Library. There will be two tours, the first at 10 a.m. and the second at 1:30 p.m.

 Tickets are $5 and each tour is limited to 25 participants. As of Monday, April 18, all morning tour tickets were sold out and only about half of the tickets for the afternoon tour remained, so be sure to buy yours soon. Tickets are now only available at the Weiser Signal American office, located at 18 E. Idaho St., and Weiser Classic Candy, located at 449 State St.

 Leading the tour is Dan Everhart, an outreach historian for Idaho’s State Historic Preservation Office, an arm of the Idaho State Historical Society.

 “This will be a repeat of what we did in 2019. At that time, we went through and identified 12 or 15 houses, which are interesting for one reason or another,” he said. “We take a fairly circuitous route, from property to property, along the sidewalk and stop and talk about them. We try to start and end at the same place, try to make it a loop for people. I think it’s a lot of fun and people will get to learn a little bit about architecture but also the history of Weiser that is told in those places.”

 Dave Bean, of the WAPC, said there has long been public interest in Weiser’s historic houses. In 1978, author Don Hibbard wrote a book, “Weiser: A look at Idaho Architecture,” that features drawings depicting architecture specific to the Weiser community. Self-guided walking tour pamphlets, which can still be found at the Weiser Chamber of Commerce, were printed the same year.

 There have been guided tours throughout the years, but 2019 is the most recent.

 “The opportunity here, and back in 2019, is to have someone like Dan, who is educated in historical architecture, point out things that are interesting to learn about,” Bean said. “Like a lot of things, when you are talking about a guided tour versus a self-guided tour, if it’s somebody who is informative, you usually come away with a better experience and learn a lot more than trying to figure it out on your own.”

 Everhart said he and his family regularly visited Weiser when he was young.

 “I grew up in Cambridge and we would drive through Weiser on our way to the big city of Ontario,” he said. “Weiser was a place that captured my imagination as a kid. Weiser, unlike many of our smaller towns around the state, has managed to retain quite a bit of its architectural fabric from across the decades. I feel like Weiser has a particularly nice collection of late 19th and 20th century buildings.”

 Everhart said Weiser has a fairly broad range of architectural styles.

 “The concentration will be on Victorian houses, which is kind of a catch-all that describes many different types of architecture and styles, so we will delve into some of those subjects, but we will certainly talk about Craftsman, what people commonly refer to as ‘Bungalows,’ and Colonial Revival,” he said.

 The walking tour is an important project for the WAPC, focusing on providing the opportunity to learn of the architectural and historical gems that exist in Weiser.

 “This is kind of a labor of love for us to put this thing on,” Bean said. “Of course, our group is interested in old houses and their architectural features. We are doing this as a way to help enrich our community in their understanding and appreciation for a lot of the neat old places we’ve got and we are hoping, now that COVID is sort of behind us, we can get back to our original plan.”

 Part of that plan is to follow up the residential walk with tours of the historic commercial buildings in town, and then tours of the historic churches.

 “That was kind of our master plan in regard to walking tours, but then COVID hit and put the brakes on all of that, so we’re trying to do a restart here this summer with the residential, but certainly our plan is to have some additional tours in the future.”