Nebeker-Kearl House / Susan Dolemba
Steward of the Historic Built Environment
160 South 200 East, Laketown, UT 84038
Nebeker-Kearl House / Susan Dolemba
Original construction: c. 1880; modifications c. 1920s–1940s
National Register: Contributing resource, Laketown, Utah; eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places
Project: August 2002 – August 2010
The People Behind It
Susan Dolemba
At a Glance
Susan Dolemba receives the Steward of the Historic Built Environment award not just for what she did to the Nebeker-Kearl House, but for what she has continued to do since. When she purchased the house in 2002, the second floor had been sealed off and left to deteriorate, the original room arrangement had been undone by decades of modifications, and a prior appraisal had written off the upper story as beyond livability. She spent eight years reversing that, rebuilding the staircase, returning the kitchen and parlor to their original locations, repairing the sandstone foundation, stabilizing the hillside, and restoring the exterior to its appearance during the Nebeker and Kearl years. But the work was never the point in itself. Susan has lived in and cared for this house for more than two decades, maintaining what she restored and remaining personally invested in a place that most people would never have taken on in the first place. In a community where the nineteenth century has largely disappeared, the Nebeker-Kearl House is the finest surviving example of an early frame home in Laketown and the most tangible remaining connection to the families who built the town. That it stands today, restored and in good hands, is the story of one person who decided a place mattered and has never stopped acting on that decision.
The Story
At the south end of Bear Lake, where the valley opens into a wide sweep of ranchland backed by the mountains of northern Utah, sits the small community of Laketown, a ranching outpost established in 1868 that has never grown much since then. The Nebeker-Kearl House is among the few nineteenth-century houses still standing there with their historic integrity intact a two-and-a-half-story Victorian Eclectic adobe cross-wing house, sheathed in drop-novelty siding, set on a stone rubble foundation, and distinguished by decorative wood quoins at its corners and pedimented drip moldings above its windows.
The house was built around 1880 by Ira Nebeker, likely with the assistance of Edwin G. Lamborn, the man credited in Rich County history with building the first frame house in Laketown. Ira served as the LDS Church bishop of Laketown from 1877 to 1904, the community's ecclesiastical and civic leader for nearly three decades, leading the construction of irrigation ditches, allocating scarce water resources, and maintaining peaceful relations with the Native American population of the Bear Lake Valley. His wife, Delia, served as the community nurse and kept the house open as an informal hotel for the steady stream of visitors to Laketown, feeding and housing church dignitaries, traveling salesmen, and tramps alike without charge.
After the deaths of Ira and Delia in the early 1900s, the house passed to their son Hyrum, and in 1910 to Zettie May Nebeker Kearl and her husband Manasseh "Byrd" Kearl, whose father had been among Laketown's first settlers and founded its first sawmill. The Kearls raised their large family here and made the house a center of community life for another three decades. Byrd and Zettie's names are still inscribed in the concrete porch deck they poured in the 1920s. After Zettie sold the property in 1945, the house passed through several owners, accumulating interior modifications that significantly compromised its original configuration.
Preservation Work
Susan Dolemba's rehabilitation, begun in 2002 and completed in 2010 with federal and state historic tax credits, aimed to return the house to its appearance during the Nebeker and Kearl occupancy, restoring both the spatial logic of the original plan and the architectural details that give the house its character.
On the exterior, paint schemes were researched from existing paint fragments and a historic oil painting of the house by an unknown artist, possibly a neighbor. The remaining exterior surfaces, painted in two tones of mauve applied in the 1980s, were repainted to restore a coherent historic color scheme. The northeast porch, enclosed in the 1920s and subsequently damaged by hillside erosion, was rebuilt to replicate the original configuration. A new roof was installed in 2003. Windows were rehabilitated throughout, with drip moldings restored and missing quoin sections replicated.
The interior work required undoing decades of accumulated changes. The staircase to the second floor had been removed after 1945 to install a main-floor bathroom, sealing off the upper story entirely. The kitchen had been relocated from the rear addition to the parlor in the 1940s, and the addition itself was divided into two bedrooms. Susan reversed all of this: the kitchen was returned to its original location, the parlor restored to its original use, and a new staircase constructed to restore access to the second floor. The historic sandstone foundation was repaired, and the hillside behind the house partially excavated, with a boulder retaining wall installed to arrest erosion that had been damaging the rear elevation for years. Updated electrical and plumbing systems were installed throughout while preserving as much of the surrounding historic fabric as possible.
Sourcing materials consistent with the building's Victorian Eclectic detailing, more characteristic of the eastern United States than the Intermountain West, required sustained effort throughout the eight-year project.
Why It Matters
The Nebeker-Kearl House today is one of the finest surviving examples of Victorian Eclectic design in rural Utah and the best remaining example of an early frame home in Laketown. The decorative wood quoins, pedimented drip moldings, drop-novelty siding, corbelled brick chimneys, and round-arch gable panels are all intact. The paint scheme, researched from physical evidence and a historic painting, restores the visual presence the house would have had during the Nebeker and Kearl years. Inside, the kitchen is where it belongs, the parlor is where it belongs, and the staircase removed decades ago has been rebuilt, giving the second floor back its place in the life of the house.
Susan Dolemba's eight-year commitment to its restoration is an act of stewardship in the fullest sense: not a single project with a beginning and an end, but a sustained personal investment in a place and the people it remembers. She has lived in and cared for the house for more than two decades, maintaining what she restored and remaining personally invested in a building that most people would never have taken on. That continuity of the decision made in 2002, honored every year since, is what this award recognizes.