Sandpoint has seen considerable population changes over the years — from the replacement of the Kalispel by white settlers to back-to-the-land hippies in the 1960s and 1970s to folks who have moved to town after retiring in the 1980s and 1990s. The population of Bonner County remained stable from 1940-1970. Then the back-to-the-land movement swept the nation. Young people, disillusioned with the “Establishment” and inspired by The Mother Earth News, headed to the hills to live simply.
Jim Parsons, Jr. began selling real estate in Sandpoint in 1970, when the area began to experience sudden growth. “I felt the main influx was kind of Colorado-type people that had felt they’d gotten priced out at Aspen and Vail and places like that,” Jim remembered. “I lived in town most of my life here and I thought, ‘Why do you want to live twenty miles back in the hills?’ And there were a lot of people that did. After a while, I realized this is what they wanted, I should be excited about it. But they were buying in places I never dreamed of even selling land.”
