A must-see stop: the historic Keuterville Pub and Grub
Mar. 30—KEUTERVILLE — It's not the menu that has drawn so many tourists and customers to the historic Keuterville Pub and Grub over the years.
Good substantial burgers, sandwiches, chicken fried steak, homemade bread and beer, but nothing to set it apart from other family diners.
It's not the decor that tempts them: beer signs, joke signs, painted saws, mounted deer and elk heads, and various antler species line the faded green walls, along with historical photos of the place a hundred years ago or so.
And it's sure not the location: 6 miles off U.S. Highway 95, 3 miles from the Monastery of St. Gertrude, tucked away on a narrow rural road among the rolling hills, the pine trees and the grain fields of the Camas Prairie.
Mostly it's the proprietor that brings people in: a feisty, friendly, funny, furiously busy lady named Linda Elliot who warns customers right off the bat that they have to sign her guest book (a spiral-bound notebook) and a stern warning to keep their language clean.
"We don't cuss at Keuterville," Elliot said. "No, we pay the cuss jar if we cuss at Keuterville. We have a cuss jar and if you continue to cuss then I get kind of upset and have to make you go home."
It's happened a few times over the years.
"Yeah, but they'll come back the next day and apologize."
After nearly 25 years flipping burgers, pouring brews, waiting on customers, laughing at their silly jokes and making everyone feel like they're a part of a big extended family, Elliot is hanging up her apron. She and her husband Dewey, who usually keeps the stool at the end of the bar warm but also has helped cook and serve customers in a pinch, are retiring. Elliot loves the Pub and Grub, she loves her customers and said it's been a wonderful run. But after 25 years she's tired and ready for a break.
The Elliots plan to pack up their camp trailer and travel a bit. Elliot said she's never seen all of Idaho and that's what she hopes to do now. When they get tired they'll return to their home in Keuterville, where they plan to stay.
Brandee Ross, a great-granddaughter of Nellie Poxleitner, who used to own what was then called the Keuterville Store from 1968 to 1986, and a niece to Nita Lorentz, who owned the place from 1990 to 1995, is taking over where the Elliots are leaving off. Ross has been a fixture at the pub "since she was a wee lass," Elliot said, and will be assisted by her husband, Jeremy, her four children and a niece.
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The original Keuterville general store, post office, bar and dance hall was built between 1903 and 1906 just as that part of the Camas Prairie was being populated by farmers, loggers and other settlers, mostly German Catholics. Right across the street is the only other remaining establishment in town — Holy Cross Church, which sits vacant most of the time except for special occasions. One resident recently quipped that Keuterville has everything a town needs — a church, a bar and a graveyard.
Some of the area's growth at the turn of the 20th century, according to the history, "Idaho County Voices," was spurred by optimism that the Northern Pacific railroad would choose Westlake and Keuterville as stopover points on the route from Lewiston to Grangeville. Eventually those communities were bypassed and a route through Cottonwood was chosen. The first train arrived in Grangeville in December 1908.
The original building burned in 1971 but the Poxleitners rebuilt. At the time the multi-functional Keuterville store sold hardware such as shovels and nails. along with food and drink, and hosted weekend dances with music furnished by local musicians.
In 1969 the Poxleitners introduced an annual "peanut party" where patrons feasted on hundreds of pounds of peanuts and threw the shells on the floor.
It's a tradition Elliot has kept up, supplying as much as 200 pounds of peanuts through the month of February.
"I leave (the shells) on the floor for the whole month of February and then we sweep them up and there shall be no peanuts again until next February," she said.
The oil in the peanut shells helps absorb the slush and mud customers tromp in on their boots that time of year, and also keeps the wood floors oiled.
The pub has long been the place to see and be seen after church on Sundays. From the town's beginning, folks would attend Mass and then hurry across the street to eat, smoke and visit with friends.
Elliot has maintained that tradition, too. Every Sunday she's served a multi-course breakfast buffet that attracts customers from all over the prairie.
Over the years the store/pub has been the center of weddings and other community celebrations.
The Elliots have kept that going through an annual turkey shoot before Thanksgiving and a rifle raffle for the Veterans of Foreign Wars right before Christmas.
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Linda Elliot grew up as the daughter of a logger and lived all over the Northwest. When she was 12 she met Dewey, then 15. Three years later they married and continued to move around to logging camps where Linda cooked and Dewey cut logs.
The couple had two children, a daughter, Bambi, and a son, Richard Eugene Elliot, who died of cancer in 2010.
A few weeks before Richard died, "he had one last wish before he passed away," Linda Elliot said. "So we took him to hunting camp and we got a deer carrier to pack him in and we let everybody know. And for two weeks we'd get people back here that would come and go and he had two weeks at hunting camp."
The Elliots have seven grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and one on the way.
In the early days of running the pub, Elliot brought her elderly mother to work, whom she'd been caring for since 1984.
"I'd bring her in, she'd drink wine, people would buy her wine and she'd get drunk," she said. "I'd put her on the couch to go to sleep. It was fine. My mom had a good time here. Everybody was gracious to her."
Her mother died in 2005.
For such a tiny, obscure place, the Elliots have made it a must-see stop for locals and travelers. And for the logger's daughter who spent her youth shifting from one locale to the other, she's put down roots in Keuterville that go deep.
She treasures "the way the community comes together," she said. "The way they support me. If I would pick out my most favorite of things, it's my coffee guys. We have a lot of fun at coffee in the morning and we'd bring treats and we share and we tell stories. I don't make money on everything but I love what I do.
"It's been a blessing to be here in Keuterville," she said. "The people have been nothing but good. I pick on them and they're allowed to pick on me."
Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.
