Valley Vista barn boasts vibrant business history
The Valley Vista Ranch barn was built by brothers William and Frank Mase in 1949 after their father, the original owner of the property, died. Now the barn is used for bi-annual craft fairs. The owners also run a small business from the property.
COCOLALLA — Valley Vista Barn, a recognized landmark for some and a fresh countryside view for others, sparks curiosity for many who drive by. Now it serves as a gathering place for local craft fairs and a location for a small business.
Mary Garrison was one of those curious passers-by until she decided to answer those questions while completing her master’s degree thesis project at Eastern Washington University in 2015.
“My project was to do 20 history stories of historical stops in Idaho since I lived there,” Garrison said.
To collect research, she downloaded old history books, referenced environmental impact surveys, and initiated discussions with long-time locals.
The barn, which is 75 years old, was originally built by brothers William and Frank Mase, Garrison wrote in her research. Their father, Charles Mase, purchased the property where the barn sits in 1929 after spending around 20 years in the ice harvesting business in Cocolalla.
“Mase was an engineer by trade and quickly found work running the trains at the ice house on Cocolalla Lake,” she said.
Cocolalla Ice & Fuel was one of the largest ice companies west of the Mississippi, Garrison wrote in one of her other projects. Workers would harvest ice from the lake and use horses and a conveyor belt to haul ice from the bank to the ice house where 100 to 200-pound cubes were loaded onto refrigeration cars of the Northern Pacific Railroad.
Mase’s time in the ice business came to an end when the industry began to decline due to the invention of the refrigerator in the early 1900s as well as the development of the mechanical ice maker in 1929. Mase then turned to farming on his new property.
Following Charles’ death, his sons worked as dairy farmers on the property and built the barn that boasts the “Valley Vista” font today.
“Early 1949 in between farm duties they cut trees from the property and hauled the logs to a field near the railroad tracks,” Garrison said. “A man that operated a portable sawmill was hired to cut 78,000 board feet of lumber from those trees … The Mase brothers started construction in the spring of 1949 and the barn was completed by late summer.”
Once completed, the structure was 32 feet by 120 feet with a loft large enough to store 250 tons of loose hay.
“Though the ranch was sold in the 1980s, the new property owners have kept the barn in its original style,” she said.
In 2010, the barn was threatened by plans to upgrade U.S. 95, however, an environmental impact statement was completed and the decision was made to use a route that will avoid the Valley Vista barn, Cocolalla school, and Bond farm, Garrison said.
Now the ranch homes horses and serves as the location for a woodworking and sublimation business called Valley Vista Creations, Jan Alsnauer Reid, the current property owner, said. She also hosts craft fairs at the barn twice yearly.
“The reason we started doing the events was to bring local people and local crafters together,” Reid said. “We have met a lot of great people from the area that have shared stories about the barn.”
Some visitors have told stories about the ranch being used as a care facility while others have mentioned its use as a draft horse facility, Reid said. One visitor even mentioned that her grandfather was the man who brought the mill in that milled the trees to build the barn.
Reid also shared that it takes 155 gallons of paint to cover the barn.
The next craft fair at Valley Vista Ranch will be May 4-5, right around the barn's 75th birthday.
“We hope a bunch of people stop by, check out the barn, check out the vendors and have some cake and talk about memories of the barn,” she said. “We both work but we retire soon and when we do we want to come up with something that we can do with the barn that will allow people to come and enjoy it.”
The Valley Vista Ranch barn was built by brothers William and Frank Mase in 1949 after their father, the original owner of the property, died. Now the barn is used for bi-annual craft fairs. The owners also run a small business from the property.
