The historic two-story Snyder house, beautiful and enigmatic in the middle of Dayville, is being dismantled.

Dismantling of the house, which according to local historians was likely built in the late 19th century and has been part of the fabric of the town and community memories since then, will make way for a new single-family residence, said Zach Williams, a representative of property owner Russ Young, who also owns Iron Triangle.

Across the town’s main street, Highway 26, is the Dayville Mini Mart managed by Cami Clark, whose husband, Calvin, is a descendant of a relative to an original occupant of the home. Clark said every summer, tourists come into the store enchanted with the structure after taking pictures of it and ask her about its history.

Clark said she was initially very upset at the thought of the home she loves so much being torn down, but she was reassured by the contractor salvaging the home’s parts that the structure would not be demolished by heavy equipment. Instead, it would be taken apart by hand, one piece at a time.

“He was telling me how he was going to do it and I told him, ‘Thank you so much,’” she said. “And I was like, ‘Give me a high five — thank you, thank you, thank you.’”

The work of taking down the house piece by piece is expected to be completed later this month to make way for a new single-family residence to be completed by 2025, Williams said.

Parts of the historic house are being salvaged by Nicholas Alexander of Barnwood Ventures in John Day.

Of the work he does, Alexander said he loves “helping the community out and making people happy.”

Among the historic items found in the home were old letters and a 1921 American silver dollar. Alexander said he will work to return personal effects to family members.

“My dad always told me to do what I loved, and when I was a kid I loved tearing things apart,” he said.

Calvin Clark is a distant relative and friend of Carey Weatherford, whose mother, Theda Weatherford, was the last occupant of the home, living there until 1990. For the past 34 years, the house has been unoccupied.

Carey, now of Bend, had lived in the home from 1949 to 1964 before embarking on a career in the media, first as a disc jockey at KJDY in John Day, then as a television reporter in Salem and later as a reporter and cameraman for CBS News, working with Walter Cronkite in New York in the 1980s.

According to Weatherford, the Snyder House was built by a man named Edward E. Lucas, likely sometime in the late 19th century. Around 1911, Weatherford said, Allen P. Snyder, who owned a ranch west of Dayville, retired and bought the house and property from Lucas and added a kitchen and the screen porches on the home’s east side.

Snyder and his wife, Missouri Officer Snyder, lived in the house for many years, according to Weatherford. Snyder died in 1927 and his daughter Ada Snyder Damon and her husband, John M. Damon, purchased the house and property in 1927. In 1944, after a period where a non-owner lived in the house, the Damons sold their ranch at Mt. Vernon and moved to the house in Dayville, according to Weatherford.

The house passed to Weatherford’s mother, Theda Weatherford, after Ada Damon’s death in 1985. The unoccupied house and property were sold to Young in 2016.

“Given the fact it was my childhood home, I’m sad to see it go away. … It both entertains tourists and it’s kind of a curio for people who grew up and lived there,” Weatherford said. “At the same time, it needs to go. I’m extremely pleased that I sold it to Russ (Young) in 2016.”