Rupert Square 2

Idaho State Legislator, Senator Kelly AntonWell, welcome to the Rupert Square. This is the historic Rupert Square in Rupert, Idaho. This is a place that makes us remember where agriculture started in this community and how important it is to our community. This is the place where the first well was drilled in the Minadoka County area and where the city sprung up when people came here to gather to collect water. So if you were to come here shortly after the well was drilled, you would see wagons and families lined up to collect potable water to take back to their homesteads. This was one of the few places that they could come to collect water for their families. Enterprising Americans realized that while people were gathered and collecting water, that they could sell them something. And so commerce and industry sprung up here with with stores that still remain, many of the buildings that are well over, you know, coming up on 100 years old that sold to families that were here collecting water. So in about 1904, 1905, this was nothing but sagebrush. And what was remarkable is within a short span of about 15 years, we got everything from new homes, new businesses, the water tower to the amazing, historic Wilson Theater, which still stands fully renovated today.

Mike Brown: Along about 1975. My family bought the a pancake. It was called the Pancake House. It was a restaurant here in Rupert, just off the square. The building that's over there is where we will locate it. And we just became more and more involved with the events because they affected Rupert. Well, as as Rupert tended to die down business, you know, died down with it. Speaker1: By by the 1990s when I was in high school. This square was in some trouble. The city had begun to lose population. We were losing businesses on the Rupert Square. And what happened was our local businessmen and farmers got together and decided that they needed to do something as a community. And so the first project, of course, was to purchase and renovate the Wilson Theater, and that has been accomplished. Now, the most recent phase was a voter approved, with 77% of our voters actually approving to spend taxpayer money to renovate this park and to revitalize this area of town. You can imagine that the infrastructure does age. And certainly that was the case with the Wilson Theater. It was the case with the the Rupert Square. Speaker2: We started having empty buildings. They would set there. And we all know that the longer something set's empty, the worse repair it becomes. We had the parapet, the top of each of the buildings. We had issues where bricks were falling off and needed to be remediated. Speaker1: The sidewalks were crumbling. Even the water lines, the electrical circuit trees, all those things that were servicing this, this particular park, they needed to be replaced. And the cost was something phenomenal that we knew we couldn't do just with the regular budget of the city. The other thing was that we wanted to reinvest in the heart of our city. And so not only did we want to repair things, we wanted to take the same steps that our early forefathers took to make this the center of the community and make sure that it was a place for gathering again. And so this park was completely renovated. All of the infrastructure, the curb, gutter, sidewalk, a new fountain and a lot of beautification to make sure that plants could grow here with automated water systems and so on and so forth. So a lot of thought, years of thought and community input took place before we actually renovated the park in discussions of what should be the priority. Some did not believe that Wilson Theater should be the priority. But on a community kind of vote, the theater won the day and the theater was renovated because I think people understood that it was a part of our heritage we needed to protect, and it was also a place for gathering of the community. Speaker1: And so what it represented was, if you can, a challenge that if you can fix the Wilson Theater, there's nothing in this community you cannot do. And that's that's actually been the outcome is once people saw that we could fix something as daunting as repairing the Wilson Theater, they said, there's nothing in this community we can't accomplish. Yeah, I mean, to have a thriving downtown community, it's much more than just having something that looks nice. One of the things we realized in working with the Wilson Theater is you don't build a theater and then never put a show in on the stage. And when you when you develop a downtown, you have to go about it the same way. You have to create a venue, and then you have to actually program that venue to make sure that it's used by the community in a way that brings the community together. And so here is the the the historic Rupert Square. We have almost weekly activities throughout the summer where the community comes together. In June, we estimate 30,000 people will visit the Rupert Square. Just. The planned community events that we have scheduled. Speaker2: And I've had more than I can count of the people that move in from California or from Washington or Oregon. And they tell me your 4th of July, we just happened to be stopping through. We've seen it advertised. So we come down and could not believe what was going on. And then when they find out it's a five day event, they go get them a motel room and they partake of the remaining days left in the celebration. Speaker1: So some of our biggest events include the Rupert's famous Independence Day 4th of July celebration. We also have the lighting of our Christmas lights by Santa Claus, who comes here on the day after Thanksgiving. We have the sugar beet drop. We have a Christmas market. We have a whole week of activities during the harvest season, including a wizarding school for children and a big trunk or treat event. And we also take on ghost tours if you want to see some of the haunted places of the Rupert Square. So there are a lot of great activities that if you want some good family fun, you can come to the Ripper Square and enjoy some time with your family.