It’s been a church, a Red Cross first aid post, a post office and a private home. Now the little stark-white log and frame cottage in the middle of Lone Butte is going through another transformation that, in time, will make it a museum of sorts.

Its last owner, 95-year-old Alice Singleton, donated her former home to the Lone Butte Historical Society two years ago and, since, they’ve been putting sporadic bits of spare cash into its rejuvenation. The upgrades come slowly but, with each one, the building comes closer and closer to the goal.

The house has been a Lone Butte landmark since at least the early 1940s and, with such a history, the society figures it’s worth preserving.

The original log portion served as the town’s first church before becoming a Red Cross outpost hospital in 1949. Manned by only a nurse, it was the only medical facility in the area with the next closest being in Aschroft and Kamloops.

Member of the Lone Butte Historical Society Anna Granberg was a young Lone Butte-area mom during that era and recalls its history.

“When the pastor left, the church sat empty for a while until the first aid got it. They built on to the log part with a kitchen and laundry. It had three little hospital-type rooms and a dispensary in the back where kids in the area got their shots.There was no power in Lone Butte at the time, but they had a generator at the post office to run whatever it was they needed to run,” said Granberg. “When the Netherland mill started going, they supplied some power to parts of the Butte and the first aid post was one of them.”

The Red Cross post saw at least four different nurses come and go during its approximately 10 years of operation.

Granberg remembers nurse Jean Mackie especially well.

“We were quite good friends. Once, I had a gas lantern explode on me and I actually caught on fire. My husband Norman wrapped me in a blanket to get the flames out but I was burned bad. Jean drove out in her car and brought me back to the first aid post and bandaged me up,” said Granberg. “Few people had cars so they treated everything there.”

She said the worst accident she recalls being treated in the first aid post was when a man had his arm cut off in a portable sawmill accident nearby.

“They brought him here but he didn’t survive. The roads were so bad at the time and he bled to death,” Granberg recounted.

In 1959, the little house took on a new identity as the town’s post office.

The whole thing came as a bit of a surprise to its owner, Alice Singleton, who, along with her husband, Fred, had recently purchased the building as their home.

Singleton said, in a 2004 interview, that a man just appeared at her doorstep one morning and announced that she had been appointed the new post master of Lone Butte.

At the time, the post office was situated across the road from Singleton in a little green house and was named Fawn Post Office. The name came from its original location at Fawn Creek, a few kilometres east up what would one day be called Highway 24 and a couple of kilometres to the north from there.

In its earliest days, mail came in on the train; and a man by the name of Percy Willard dispersed it from his home at Fawn.

The next postmaster was a woman named Mrs. Hunter, said Granberg.

“She lived on the Horse Lake Cut-off Road and did all the mail from her home for a short while and then moved it to another house she had right in Lone Butte,” said Granberg.

Sisters Silva and Doris Gordon handled the mail next from their home in town and following them was Singleton.

When Singleton acquired the position, she decided that to make things easier for herself, the post office should be moved to her own home. A piece was added to the front of her house with a counter in front and cubby-holes at the back to accommodate the mail.

“There were no private boxes at first. You had to go up to the wicket and ask for your mail,” said Granberg, noting that it was while Singleton ran it that the name changed from Fawn to Lone Butte Post Office.

It was a post-war era, with suspicion and uncertainty still in the air. As a precautionary measure, then prime minister John Diefenbaker had bunkers built all over the country that would serve as shelters should war break out in Canada at some time.

Rural post offices were favourite locations for some of the smaller bunkers and Singleton one day found her own yard the chosen spot for one.

A small above-ground cinderblock building was erected just a few steps from her house and with it came instructions that if Canada were ever to suffer the effects of atomic warfare, she was to dress herself in a special protective suit and hole-up in the shelter. Inside was nothing but a gas lamp and an instrument that tested air quality that she would take outside periodically to determine if the air was safe to breath.

The grey concrete building still sits awkwardly in the yard, having never been used for anything but storage.

Alice Singleton has her own colourful local history, which started at the Unicorn Ranch in the 1930s when she was just a young woman.

She and her sister Anna came out from Alberta to work as cooks on the ranch and pursue their love of riding horses.

For many years, Singleton helped to drive the ranch horses south to Kamloops for the winter, which was done over a period of four days on horseback.

A few of Singleton’s personal belongings still remain in the old house, protected by a caretaker who exchanges maintenance and repair of the building and property for rent. With little money in the historical society’s coffers, Granberg said it’s the only way to get things done.

“If we ever get enough money to finish it, we can see about opening it up,” she said, although it was open to the public, with guided tours, during the Lone Butte Rocks celebration in mid-June.

Alice Singleton Heritage House is located in the heart of Lone Butte, on Highway 24, across from the post office.