Tubbs Hill overlooks the City of Coeur d'Alene. It is situated between the lake, the resort and the rest of downtown Coeur d'Alene. It is purely a lucky mistake that the hill became a public park instead of a residential area, and for that we can thank Tony Tubbs for his poor planning.

German born Tony Tubbs was a prominent figure of the late 1800's in Coeur d'Alene. Tubbs was a land salesman, a hotel owner and a justice of the peace during his time in the area. In 1884 Tubbs bought 138 acres of land next to Lake Coeur d'Alene. A popular sales method for land plots in mostly undeveloped areas is to assume the buyer has not and might not see it before purchase, and describe it to them as if it is flat land ready to be built on or to plot it out as if it is an ideal settlement spot. Tubbs did just that, he platted it out for multiple residential neighborhoods and peddled it to unfamiliar settlers. Some of the details he did not mention were that the hill was solid rock and would be unable to be built on with the tools available in the late 1800s; also the change in elevation from the base of the hill to the top is over 375 feet on an eight to thirty degree grade.

Tubbs was successful with a few sales. Washington Water Power Co purchased the south shore and east half of the hill in the early 1900s to create a water system for the city. The first major structure built on the hill was a large concrete reservoir for lake water in 1903. In 1949 a second reservoir was built out of steel to accommodate the growing population. Coeur d'Alene Lumber Co purchased the rest of the waterfront sections and operated a saw mill on the land directly below the hill (the area that is now McEuen Field). But the depression era hit the Idaho panhandle hard, and the lumber mill went bankrupt. In 1936 the city purchased the mill property for use as a public park and a building site for municipal water and electric power plants. The objective was to put two large diesel engines at the base of the hill to provide power for the local area. This plan put Washington Water Power Co into an uproar, as they were the current utility providers for the area. After denial of federal funding and a few lawsuits against the city, Washington Water Power Co got their way and no power plant was to be built.

In the 1920s a grandstand was built on the hill to view the sailboat races of the summertime. In the 1960s hydroplane races became popular. Hydroplane races caused too much excitement for the general public, and began to give the area a bad reputation. So they were eventually cancelled and banned from the area. If you look closely on the south east corner of the hill, the only remnants of the grandstand can be seen, five solitary concrete blocks.

During World War II, the park directly below was briefly housing for Farragut Naval Station, and a civic center was constructed. But one summer Saturday night in 1944 the civic center burned down, the city saved the money to rebuild a civic center but it has never been rebuilt. Farragut closed after the war and the housing was torn down, leaving only an empty dirt field. The city decided to purchase the field and set it aside for a public park, the first section of the Tubbs Hill area to be publicly preserved for a park. In later years the remainder of the hill would be purchased by the city for public use, but only after a long struggle with developers using the poorly laid out plats designed by Tony Tubbs.

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Regionally known as the largest amusement park in the Inland Northwest, Silverwood has a long and varied history as an airport, an air museum, and finally a place of roller coasters and waterslides. The story begins with a man named Clayton Henley.

Clayton "Clay" Henley was the founder of the Henley Aerodrome, a private airport and antique plane museum just south of Athol in Northern Idaho. Henley opened the airport in July 1973, it became known as the black sheep of local airfields and the local Spokane flying schools forbade their students from using it. When Henley died in 1977 there were many small parcel owners of the airfield, in order to save the airfield they ended up selling all of it to Gary Norton.

Norton was an entrepreneur who made a fortune with his company ISC (International Systems Corporation), one of IBM's early competitors. Norton had the time and the space to focus more on his passion of collecting and flying antique aircraft such as the P-51 Mustang. Tragically, on July 28th 1981 the museum hangar storing many of his prized collectible airplanes caught fire. Norton rebuilt the hangar and began collecting again, but the air museum never recovered.

Norton began to shift the focus of his attraction with a new addition to the museum. A 1915 steam train and over three miles of track were added to the property. He then decided that any train needs a town to run through. This prompted the building of a Victorian style town, Main Street and the beginning of Silverwood.

Silverwood officially opened as an amusement park in June 20, 1988. The first year of operation brought in 110,000 visitors. Norton slowly began adding a variety of attractions to the park, such as the corkscrew roller coaster, purchased from Knotts Berry Farm in California.

There are other attractions that are no longer featured at the park, but drew many excited park guests. An early feature of Silverwood was their daily half-hour air shows performed at 7:00pm each evening, air shows were performed from the time the park opened until 1996. A full grown African lion named Leonard was purchased, along with a variety of other wild cats and animals. After some problems with the wild nature of the animals and some escape antics, it was decided that the large cats must go. The now vacant aircraft museum housed a Silverwood on Ice show briefly, produced and directed by Norton. It attracted top talent from across the globe, including Olympic medalists and a Russian world championship skater.

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At the heart of the Silver Valley, Wallace has always been a town of boom and bust.

Founded in 1884, the town is named for William R. Wallace, a local farmer. Silver mining would soon replace agriculture, and the community that emerged around Wallace's small cabin would soon develop into a regional center for the Silver Valley mining industry. The town boomed in 1884 with the discovery of the Poorman and Tiger silver lodes. Additional lodes of precious metals were soon discovered, forming one of the largest Silver deposits in the United States. By 1886, the town's population surpassed five hundred, continuing to grow with new access to the railroad.

In 1890, Wallace had its first brush with disaster when a fire tore through town, burning the town's timber buildings. After the fire, the town was reconstructed with brick, in the hopes of reducing the risk of fire. In August of 1910 the stage was set for a great fire storm which would ravage Washington and Northern Idaho. The heat and dry summer conditions aided in the spread of fire and its destructive wake. The fire, known as the "Big Burn" destroyed at least one-third of Wallace and killed over eighty people in the Inland Northwest. Wallace had no sooner recovered when a second disaster struck. The Great Flood of 1913, caused by heavy rains and a swollen river, unleashed a torrent of water in northern Idaho. Several towns were inundated with flood water, even washing a train from its tracks.

Each time Wallace rebuilt, financed by the apparently inexhaustible veins of silver in the surrounding mountains. Labor troubles as well as natural disasters roiled the Silver Valley as mine owners and their employees battled over working conditions and labor costs. In 1892, mining violence erupted between the two sides as the Frisco Mill was destroyed by explosives killing several people. Then, the following year, the price of silver collapsed causing many mines to temporarily shut down. By 1899, tensions grew as mine owners tried to break the unions, causing workers to resort to violence. After seventeen workers were terminated for joining a union, workers used dynamite to destroy the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mines.

Responding to the pleas of the mine owners and Idaho's Governor Steunenberg, President McKinley sent troops from Fort George Wright in Spokane to restore order to the region. These were African-American Buffalo soldiers. The use of black troops to suppress white miners was a great shock to many at a time when white supremacy was the law of the land.

Mining tapered off after World War II, and Wallace shrank in size and importance. Wallace's population peaked at nearly four thousand in 1940s and has slowly declined each decade since to less than 800 in 2010. Today Wallace is a popular tourist destination. Visitors can walk the streets of town and catch a glimpse of mining life in Wallace. Filled with old buildings and mining history, the town of Wallace is an important link to the past of northern Idaho and Inland Northwest. Going to Wallace one takes a trip back in time, experiencing life as it was one hundred years ago.

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