Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A town with a Mormon population is about to learn the difference between the religious and the secular.
North Beach Road
What you need to know before your trail
A tiny community tucked away in the Southeast corner of Idaho, next to beautiful Bear Lake with a predominately Mormon population, is about to learn the difference between the religious and the secular. Two capital crimes turn this little town and surrounding community into a tinderbox of questions and fear concerning both. Sheriff Ned Williamson, a former Marine and his trusted friend, the coroner, Winston Rand need to solve two crimes. Are they related or separate? Are outsiders responsible? And is the local patriarch, Willard Jensen, who he seems to be? Will his son and daughter, Stacy and Stanley find out the truth about him?
Meanwhile the sanity of a young girl, Marcy McFadden, hangs in the balance. What is going on with her sessions with the local Bishop? How far does the word trust go?
Locations
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Travel BookTrail style to Montepelier, Idaho
By Early spring in 1882, the railroad was trekking across the Bear Lake Valley nearly as fast as one could walk. Railroad ties had to be long enough, thick enough (8 inches) and be flat on one side to stabilize the enormous weight of the locomotives that would travel the shiny rails that guided trains to their destination.
Stalwart fifty-men crews literally marched across the country, sometimes covering as much as 450 miles in a day. Most of them came from various walks of life following the right-of-way path left by earlier survey crews leveling grades, clearing brush and building bridges while withstanding floods, freezing cold in winters and during summers, the triple digit head that descended upon them. Add to that accidents like twisted rails or a foundation that would give way causing engines to ‘jump track’. But minimum life was lost during these rare occurrences.
By July 24 of that same year, the railroad officially arrived in Montpelier. Idaho and would continue there where it would be an integral part of that community for thirty some years: essentially it was the mid- way point between Omaha, Nebraska and Portland, Oregon serving as an active depot for passenger, freight and cattle shipments. Montpelier was also the largest ice-producing plant between the two great American cities at that time.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: North Beach Road
Destination: Idaho, Montepelier Author/guide: J.W. James III Departure: 2000s
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