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Gil Wright (L) and Kent Schulz (R) stand between two historical signs along ID-34 in Wayan.

Remember tiny Wayan, Idaho?
Forty years later, Schulz calls it home again

When someone returns to a tiny place like Wayan, Idaho (about 35 miles north of Soda Springs in southeastern Idaho), it’s big news. So when Kent Schulz returned to his hometown decades after he left, it was significant. ITD's D5 maintenance efforts benefited, too.

“I grew up here about seven miles from the state shed, was gone 34 years and when my dad passed, I came back home,” Schulz explained.

Schulz lived in Wayan from 1964 until he graduated in 1983 and left town to find work.

"I worked in the saw mill in Afton, Wyoming, for six years till it closed," Schulz said. "From there, I bounced around a little, then went to Elko, Nevada, and worked In the gold mines for 21 years. There was no opening out here till I came back home."

Schulz returned to Wayan (pronounced way-ANNE) in 2015 to man the little ITD maintenance shed in town, as longtime employees Brian Muir and Dave Smith had both retired and Soda Springs Foreman Gil Wright sought to fill the vacancy. It had been a two-person shop, with Muir and Smith, from 1982-2014. Schulz is the only department employee out there now.

“We would have replaced them both, but I couldn’t find anyone else who lives out there,” Wright said.

Thirty years ago, when ITD installed the John Grey historical sign located on the outskirts of town (honoring the man who discovered the valley), there was a cash-only general store, a couple of houses, a one-room school house for kindergarten through sixth grade, and mail was still delivered there in town.

There were about 35 families that lived out there when he was a boy, Schulz estimates. The unofficial population now hovers around 100, less than half the population just a decade ago. The lack of employmenty opportunities has had a lot to do with that.

The school was functioning (11 students) and a small store existed just up the road from that location. Today, the store has been converted to a residence, one of just a handful, and the school house has been boarded up and closed for the better part of 10 years. The mail isn’t even delivered there anymore – it goes to Soda Springs instead – ironic given that the town was named for its first postmaster.

ITD still maintains a one-person maintenance station there, but the area has its challenges. Like a lot of very remote, very small towns, cell service is pretty spotty. The area invites a lot of snow and wind in the winter. The valley floor is at 6,400 feet in elevation, and it goes up from there to the top of Tincup road (and on up to the top of Cariboo Mountain, which is about 9,000 feet in elevation).

“It is 35 miles from Soda to Wayan, and we cover another 30 miles from Wayan to Thayne, Wyoming,” Wright said. Thayne, another metropolis with a population under 400, sits at just about 6,000 feet.

Schulz sums up Wayan this way -- "Small. Challenging. Home.”