Dover, ID had a population of 735 as of 2017. This tiny timber town became the site of a 500-unit resort community called Dover Bay in 2005, according to the city’s website.
At Tuesday afternoon’s edition of the Malcolm Renfrew Interdisciplinary Colloquium, assistant professor Ryanne Pilgeram shared her research into how Dover, ID became gentrified. Pilgeram is writing a book, under the working title “Developed Bargaining for a Future in the American West,” which will elaborate what she discussed in her talk.
“Rural gentrification is said to require two elements,” Pilgeram said. “A demographic shift from urban and suburban areas to rural ones happening according to particular timelines in particular timelines, that’s the first one. The second is an influx of a population of people with social and economic power to a rural area where they are able to observe that power.”
Dover was founded in 1906 as the town of Welty. Dover was a timber town, a community built around a mill site on the Pend Oreille River. Pilgeram said the town stayed that way until the 1980s, when the mill proceeded to unionize, close and burn down in quick succession.
The mill site had been sold to an investment company that failed to take care of the rampant sewage and water quality problems in the town. Pilgeram said this led to Dover’s gentrification.
“The water system was originally from the 1920s,” Pilgeram said. “It was a wooden pipe system. One resident said the water system had been ‘fixed, repaired, run over, broke up, dug up’ many times over the years. By the 1980s, the water system leaked so severely that there was ‘a regular creek flowing from it.’”
When the timber mill controlled Dover, the company provided citizens with water, Pilgeram said. When the investment company took over, however, they provided only enough service to comply with the letter of the law, Pilgeram said.
The company did not need to provide drinkable water, she said. For six years, the citizens of Dover lived under a boil order. This meant that the drinking water in Dover had been contaminated by illness-causing organisms, according to the Department of Environmental Services.
“The sewer system was red flagged by the health department, meaning they couldn’t build any additional homes in the community and the contaminated sewage was leaking into the watershed,” Pilgeram said.
After the people of Dover fought to rebuild their sewage and water systems, the investment company in control of the old mill site sold land at a large profit, she said. Dover was marketed as a high-end resort-style destination, which led to the development of Dover Bay — and the eventual gentrification of Dover.
Pilgeram wants to continue to explore the causes of gentrification and make sense of the changes happening in rural communities. She believes sociology provides a unique lens to examine these changes.
Next week, Rebecca Scofield and Katherine Aiken will present “Idaho Women Win the Right to Vote” at the colloquium. The presentation will take place from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 23 in the Idaho Commons Whitewater Room. It will be the second to last presentation for this year’s colloquium.
Lex Miller can be reached at [email protected]