The Northern Pacific Railroad Depot stands as an elegant reminder of two stories. The first is the age of the railroads and their impact on the Silver Valley of Idaho. The second story is about historic preservation and how concerned citizens worked…

Not all the wealth of Wallace came from the mines. Some came from bedrooms of the working women of the brothels like the Oasis or the Bi-Metallic. As the miners extracted the ore from the ground, the second wave of workers arrived to mine the wages…

Today a small, quiet settlement of 690 people, Mullan, Idaho was once a bustling mining town. Located just four miles west of the Montana border, Mullan was established in 1884. The town was named after United States Army Captain John Mullan, who…

North of I-90, just off of exit 28 is a short interpretive trail dedicated to the memory of Captain John Mullan and special 4th of July celebration. While excavating a military road in the Washington Territory wilderness, Captain John Mullan and…

The modern surveillance state casts a long shadow back to the center of silver extraction: the Coeur d’Alene Mining District in northern Idaho during the late nineteenth century. In 1892 Charles Siringo, a Pinkerton agent, ran for his life from the…

If you had visited this bar in the late 19th century, you'd have encountered dance hall girls, gamblers, and famous lawman Wyatt Earp. Welcome to one of the oldest bars in the Silver Valley, The Snake Pit, in Kingston, Idaho. The wooden sign…

My name is James Fredrick Wardner but my friends call me Jim. Despite the lack of notoriety for my accomplishments, I contributed a great deal to the mining success in the Silver Valley. Because of my wit and initiative, the Bunker Hill and Sullivan…

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…

By the early 1900s, the rough and tumble frontier towns of America were dying off, slowly becoming gentrified and developed into respectable settlements. Taft, Montana was one town that wasn't going to go down quietly. Home to pimps, prostitutes…