Casting Back; Store is snapshot of summers past

"I used to tie the flies," she said. "Now I just drink the coffee."

That's because Downey retired in 2005. But for 21 years, she was the owner of the Beaver Dam Store, on Highway 187 near the Beaver Lake Dam. She doesn't have to go far to recall her customers' faces -- they smile down at her from snapshots posted on the bulletin board on the front porch.

"These are people that came back and got their picture made with their fish," Downey said. "There's a lot of history here."

Originally a concrete-block bait shop, the Beaver Dam Store had three owners before Downey and partner Alice Holt bought it in 1984. They purchased it from Ed Grovlebe, who had bought it eight years earlier from John Cudia-- some people still call it John's Beaver Dam Store, Downey said. Cudia added onto the back of the store to create the grocery section, and built an apartment over the addition.

Downey and Holt squared off the front of the building by enclosing the inset corner of the front porch and adding a second apartment over the front. That still left a porch across the front of the store, where the bulletin board now hangs. The Beaver Dam Store was originally built in the 1960s, Downey said. She doesn't remember the name of the couple who built it, but met one of them.

"A woman came in here who was one of the original owners," Downey said. "She said she laid the blocks and hauled the water to mix the mortar from Dry Creek, which runs right outside the store."

The nearby White River was a warm-water fishery until Beaver Dam was built and cold water pumped into the river from 60 feet below the surface of the newly-formed Beaver Lake. Mitigation of the warm-water fishery led to the White River being stocked with rainbow trout. It's still stocked every week to 10 days, Downey said. During their ownership, she and Holt developed the fly-fishing side of the business and the guide service.

"The trout fishing is one of the drivers of the economy in this little part of Eureka," Downey said.

A fly-fishing instructor and fishing guide, Downey wrote a fishing column for the local newspaper called "Current Conditions." She also started the One Fly Fishing Tournament in 1997, which is held every year in October on the Beaver tail waters of White River. The whole area was busy from Memorial Day to Labor Day, she said, and still is.

"A lot of people still come to camp and fish, or go to the lake," she said.

Beaver Dam Store is now owned by Pete Godfrey, who also owns the adjacent Spider Creek Resort. But Downey is the keeper of the memories, the bridge to the store's past and the faces in the faded photographs on the "Wall of Fame." The fun part about the snapshots:

"A lot of the folks who came in here, now have children and grandchildren who come in," she said, "or they were little and they're grown up and bring their own grandchildren."

More recent photographs are posted inside the store, next to where Downey sits and sips her coffee in the morning. The photographs were taken with cell phones or digital cameras, and printed out from a computer, but still show people with smiling faces holding up their catch.