Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Silver Valley, The
    Silver Valley, The
    Silver Valley, The
    Ebook173 pages53 minutes

    Silver Valley, The

    By Historic Wallace Preservation Society

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The descent into Idaho from the Montana border down Lookout Pass on Interstate 90 largely follows the trail Capt. John Mullan blazed over 150 years ago. The Silver Valley is home to Shoshone County’s seat, the historic silver-mining city of Wallace, which has been something of a phoenix rising out of the ashes of two great fires.
    Along with Wallace, the valley encompasses many other small mining towns, such as Mullan, Silverton, Osburn, Kellogg, Smelterville, Pinehurst, and Kingston, with diverse histories that are both humorous and heartbreaking. It also surrounds the Cataldo Mission, Idaho’s oldest standing building, built by the Jesuits and the Coeur d’Alene tribe in 1848.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateOct 1, 2004
    ISBN9781439640579
    Silver Valley, The
    Author

    Historic Wallace Preservation Society

    The Historic Wallace Preservation Society has compiled the information and images for this book. The Silver Valley's story reads like a dime novel--men, money, mining, murder, mayhem, and prostitution--and locals are proud of it all. The society hopes this book will be enjoyed by all readers, and visitors are welcome anytime.

    Related to Silver Valley, The

    Related ebooks

    Photography For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Puckety Chute

      Mar 1, 2018

      Puckety Chute
      17 min read

    • Article

      Re-Discovering Memories

      Feb 27, 2024

      Re-Discovering Memories
      2 min read

    • Article

      Find Your U.S. Ancestors

      Oct 31, 2023

      Find Your U.S. Ancestors
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Billion-Acre Wood

      Aug 29, 2023

      The Billion-Acre Wood
      8 min read

    • Article

      These Honored Dead

      Apr 20, 2021

      These Honored Dead
      9 min read

    • Article

      Skinwalker Science

      Oct 8, 2020

      Skinwalker Science
      2 min read

    • Article

      See The Light

      Dec 4, 2019

      My Geiger counter leaps from zero to .003 in a heartbeat. “It’s OK!” our guide, Helen, assures me. “This is a very low level of radiation!”The Geiger counters are handed out to the members of my tour and activated one by one. Helen assures us of the

      6 min read

    • Article

      Tracing ‘The Most Buried Man In The World’: John Paul Jones, Scotland And The Us

      Oct 7, 2023

      ‘Do you know who he is?’ I asked the middle-aged man standing in front of the statue of John Paul Jones, one ofWashington DC’s many monuments and memorials built to convey American national self-confidence. Not far from us on the National Mall stood

      6 min read

    • Article

      Alien Zoo

      Nov 2, 2023

      KARL SHUKER ponders a mysterious golden orb and greets an unexpected canine hybrid On 30 August 2023, a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) run by the Seascape Alaska 5 expedition, launched by the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NO

      3 min read

    • Article

      Highclere Castle AT CHRISTMAS

      Nov 6, 2019

      Highclere Castle AT CHRISTMAS
      5 min read

    • Article

      Research Guide arizona

      Jun 22, 2021

      Research Guide arizona
      6 min read

    • Article

      Nothing But the Truth

      Apr 19, 2022

      Nothing But the Truth
      10 min read

    • Article

      Lowcountry Idyll

      Mar 16, 2021

      Lowcountry Idyll
      4 min read

    • Article

      Hiking Into The Past

      Mar 1, 2022

      Hiking Into The Past
      10 min read

    • Article

      Come To Life In Colorado

      Jun 8, 2021

      WHEN I MOVED FROM CROWDED AND congested West Los Angeles to the small artist community of Manitou Springs at the foot of Pikes Peak in Colorado, it marked a big lifestyle change. It meant not just a return to the equestrian life but the opportunity t

      7 min read

    • Article

      Old Town New Prospects

      Jul 3, 2019

      Old Town New Prospects
      6 min read

    • Article

      Land Of Enchantment

      Jul 19, 2023

      Land Of Enchantment
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Wild Colonial Boys

      Sep 17, 2020

      The Wild Colonial Boys
      7 min read

    • Article

      Life Of A Ghost Town

      Jan 7, 2020

      Life Of A Ghost Town
      9 min read

    • Article

      LITTLE JERUSALEM Badlands

      Apr 21, 2020

      LITTLE JERUSALEM Badlands
      3 min read

    • Article

      Gold Hill, Nevada

      May 23, 2023

      Gold Hill, Nevada
      3 min read

    • Article

      Heritage Trail

      Apr 19, 2022

      Heritage Trail
      12 min read

    • Article

      Going For Gold (part 1)

      Jul 4, 2019

      Going For Gold (part 1)
      6 min read

    • Article

      Looking Back 200 Years

      Mar 16, 2020

      Looking Back 200 Years
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Southern Agenda

      Jan 10, 2019

      The Southern Agenda
      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Silver Valley, The

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Silver Valley, The - Historic Wallace Preservation Society

      Inc.

      INTRODUCTION

      Welcome to the Silver Valley. Its very name lures you in with its promise of riches, of fortunes won and lost.

      A decade after the Civil War, dreams of the mother lode brought men from all over the world to the heart of the Bitterroot Mountains in what would become the continental United States’ last gold rush. Tent cities with names like Delta, Eagle, Prichard, and Murray sprang up along the Coeur d’Alene River’s headwaters as word of gold in them there hills spread around the lower 48. Once the Shoshone County seat, Murray is home of the Bedroom Gold Mine saloon and the Sprag Pole Museum and Saloon, both well-tended points of historic interest.

      While the easy findings of gold panning played out within the ensuing decade, gold mining remained a staple of that district’s economic diet into the 1930s with a Guggenheim-owned dredge responsible for the boulder piles still visible on Prichard Creek today. However in 1884, silver, lead, and zinc were discovered on the Coeur d’Alene River’s South Fork, prompting a silver rush. Among the discoveries were the famed Sunshine, Hercules, and Bunker Hill mines and the ensuing production of more than 1 billion ounces of silver. Trains operated by the Oregon Navigation Company, Northern Pacific, and Union Pacific ran up and down the rivers, and to and from Wallace and Burke, linking the communities before there was even talk of a road. During the first and second decades of the 1900s, Bunker Hill built lead and zinc smelters to purify ores and get around the high tariffs imposed by the railroad cartels.

      Today numerous mines still operate along the Osburn Fault that runs beneath the South Fork, including Hecla’s Lucky Friday mine in Mullan, U.S. Silver’s Galena mine near Osburn, the New Bunker Hill Mining Company in Kellogg, and the New Jersey Mining Company Mill just east of Kellogg. Geologists say there remain another billion ounces of silver, still in the ground, along the Silver Valley.

      The wealth from our ore went to work building the cities of Spokane, Washington, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and endowed chairs at the University of California. To this day many of the streets and prominent buildings in Spokane bare the names of the mine owners from our valley, and their mansions stand as residences, museums, restaurants and even a bishopric. Coeur d’Alene and the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River became places for summer homes and vacations. The rail bed is now a paved bike trail, the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes that takes travelers down 72 miles along the Coeur d’Alene River to the bottom of Lake Coeur d’Alene through the chain lakes, and through the lake city of Harrison and timber town of St. Maries. The old Milwaukee Road bicycle ride takes its riders through tunnels and over trestles that will amaze on the Route of the Hiawatha, the route of the million-dollar silk trains.

      Each of the towns in the valley has its own colorful history. They include stories of ghosts like Miss Maggie, who keeps the employees on their toes at The Jameson on Sixth Street in Wallace. In the early days, if two folks wanted to move a road or a line, a handshake at a lodge meeting took care of it. Why spend time and money at the courthouse recording it when a man’s word was all you needed? There’s the story of how Wallace stole the county seat from Murray. There were the mining wars of early days that pitted workers against the mine owners and the U.S. Army, giving birth to the union movement and incidentally women’s suffrage. The valley’s St. Valentines Day shoot-out that left two dead and two wounded was over a woman who, by today’s standards, would not get a second look. Thankfully, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Kellogg for years had a sign at its western entrance welcoming visitors with the slogan The town which was discovered by a jackass and which is inhabited by its descendants.

      Cataldo offers its Catholic mission, the oldest standing building in Idaho, beckoning visitors to the history of the native people who called it the Dark Valley. When they hunted here, they would not spend the night in the narrow canyons where the sun touches the floor of the valley for only short periods of time.

      I have childhood memories of placing my hands in the dried mud handprints that Native American children left behind. They mixed mud with straw and plastered it against the inside walls of the mission. Fitting my fingers into the impressions that their hands left in the wall gave me an overwhelming need to protect our local history. History, its truths and its legends, link everyone together. Hopefully, history teaches us that life and the world around us is forever changing and forever the same. We can stand still and watch it go by, or like the men and women who built our valley, we can move ahead, sometimes with overwhelming speed to new horizons. We hope readers enjoy this walk through time as

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1