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 mines boomed. Though I did not discover their locations, it was I that made sure the two mines became prosperous.

I was born in May, 1846 in the great state of Wisconsin. When I was eight I noticed that rabbits multiplied quickly, so I started trading them and never looked back. I got away from fur trading and when I was 37 and headed out towards Murray and Eagle, the two camps in northern Idaho. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about over the findings of gold in the Coeur d' Alene region.

After a few years of middling success I decided to throw in the towel on Idaho and mining. While I was leaving Gene's tavern after a small farewell gathering for my last night in Idaho, my old friend John Flaherty stopped me with great news. Flaherty full of excitement and while panting said, "Say, Jim, I have seen a mine what is a mine. I have located both extensions, and I want you to go to work and git there as quick as you can. Come into Guse's and we'll talk over it." I quickly sobered up after hearing this momentous news, but for not long. We headed back in and dispatched more whiskey while he gave me the details. This was the start of the great Bunker Hill and Sullivan mines.

After hearing the details, I headed out toward Flaherty's camp with two bottles of Walker's Rye whiskey. Here, other men informed by Flaherty would accompany me in the search. When the locations of the mines were distinguished and the men were feeling satisfied, I snuck away with a hatchet and marked a fir tree along the Milo Creek. This ensured us the rights to the water that the mines needed in order to prosper. Without water, the mines would be useless and thanks to me that was not the case. Though obtaining water rights was crucial, I was not done with my contributions. After discussing the finances for the mines, it was clear that I needed to step again, due to the lack of funds. I got the ball rolling with the initial $15,000, which ultimately adds to my argument that I had the greatest influence on the development of the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mines.

After selling the rights to the water and my shares in the two mines, I left the Silver Valley to pursue other trades. Not all of my ventures were as successful. In an attempt to regain my fur trader status from my younger days, I opened a cat ranch on an inland in the Puget Sound. Aside from poor judgments in other ventures throughout my life, I will always be known for my most crucial contributions to the success of the great Bunker Hill and Sullivan mines in Silver Valley.

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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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The Union Pacific Freight Depot is a legacy from Idaho's great age of rail.

When precious metals were discovered in Northern Idaho, the region exploded with mining activity. Railroads rushed in to serve and profit from the mines and their communities. By the turn of the 20th Century, divisions of the Union Pacific and Northern Pacific were locked in fierce competition for domination of the mining region.

In the early in the 1880's smaller railroad companies obtained charters for construction through the mining towns of Silver Valley. The Coeur d'Alene Railroad and Navigation Company (CR&N) constructed a narrow gauge rail line through the Silver Valley and was soon absorbed into the Northern Pacific Railway. In response, the Union Pacific pushed a standard gauge line through the same region. It was said the two lines were laid so close together that engineers could shake hands without leaving their locomotives.

Construction of the Union Pacific Freight Depot in Kellogg was completed in 1914. The depot handled freight and mail for the mining town of Kellogg and surrounding areas. Periodic washouts and landslides sometimes closed the route temporarily, but it was always rebuilt.

The Freight Depot faced an uncertain future as mining dwindled in the late-20th century. Confronted with closed mines and abandoned structures, Kellogg and other Silver Valley communities had to decide what to do with the relics of the mining years. One solution was the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes, a 73-mile trail created on the former Union Pacific Railroad right-of-way. The Kellogg Union Pacific Depot was leased to Excelsior Cycles in 1999, and is once again linked to the path which runs in front of the Depot. Instead of the Depot loading freight and mail from the mining town onto the railroad, the Depot now rents and sells bikes that can be used to explore the former path of the Oregon Railway & Navigation line.

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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 and murderers, Taft earned the title, "the wickedest city in America" given by a visiting Chicago Tribune reporter. If a working man had an appetite for vice, he was sure to get his fill in Taft.

Taft started as an unnamed work camp in 1907. The town was home to men working for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, who wanted to extend their line through the Bitterroot Mountains. The name of the town allegedly came about after Secretary of War William H. Taft visited the work camp. Secretary Taft chastised the unnamed camp for being a "sewer of sin" and "a sore on an otherwise beautiful national forest." Either out of jest or spite, the townsmen named their community in honor of the future president.

As construction of the railroad began in earnest, Taft grew, the height of its population peaking somewhere around three thousand. Consisting of little more than a half-mile stretch of road, Taft boasted between 20 and 50 saloons. Along with men working the railroad, Taft was also home to many other men and women of ill-repute. The second biggest profession in Taft, right after railroad workers, was prostitution. A den to criminals as well as pleasure seekers, springtime in Taft often meant the discovery of dead bodies that were uncovered as the winter snow melted. During the final spring in Taft, as many as seventeen bodies were found.

The shanty-town quality of Taft made it particularly susceptible to fire, as it burned down at least twice before 1910. Taft was finally wiped clean in 1910, when forest fires ravaged much of northern Idaho and western Montana. Rather than answering the forest rangers call to fight the fires, most citizens of Taft put their energy towards draining the town of its remaining alcohol. Taft's inhabitants were evacuated by train, but the town itself wasn't so lucky.

Some futile attempts to raise Taft back to its infamous glory were quickly shut down by forest rangers. A few abandoned buildings survived until they were finally buried by the construction of I-90 in 1962. Now, all that remains of the once "wickedest city in America" is a freeway exit on I-90 and a staging area for snowplows.

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"Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound" was the motto of the Yellowstone Trail, America's first transcontinental highway, established in 1912.

Interstate 90 was not the first road in the United States to connect east to west. In fact, I-90's route through the Silver Valley closely follows that of its earliest predecessor, the Yellowstone Trail. The Trail was inspired by J.W. Parmley of Ipswich South Dakota in 1912. Parmley and his business partners needed a good road from Ipswich to Aberdeen, twenty-five miles away. Their intent rapidly expanded. Soon their road would extend to the next town, then to North Dakota, then on to Yellowstone National Park. Eventually, Parmley envisioned "a good road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound."

The Yellowstone Trail Association was established in 1912 with its headquarters located in Minneapolis. This organization did not actually build roads. Instead it helped local chapters raise money and provided instructions for road construction and maintenance. The Yellowstone Trail Association also worked to promote domestic tourism, printed maps and pamphlets which they handed out along the trail, and advocated the automobile for long distance trips.

The Yellowstone Trail Association was a particularly successful example of the Good Roads Movement, In the late 19th century bicyclists and then automobile owners organized politically to push for improved roads. By 1920 The United States had over 200 named auto trails, though only two, the Yellowstone and Lincoln highways, were trans continental in scope.

The Yellowstone Trail cut through Idaho as the Interstate does today. After leaving Montana, the trail passed through the towns of Mullan, Wallace, Kellogg, and Cataldo. From here, the trail descended into Fourth of July Canyon, while the interstate today climbs the pass. The trail then passed through Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls before crossing into Washington. Few people remember the Yellowstone Trail as being the first northern transcontinental highway. However, to the communities it passed through, it meant tremendous social and economic opportunity.

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Mining has always been hard, dirty, and above all dangerous work. This monument memorializes one of the worst tragedies ever to strike the Silver Valley, the Sunshine Mine Disaster of 1972.

Of all the mines in the Silver Valley the Sunshine Mine, located between the cities of Wallace and Kellogg, is perhaps the best known. Over its one-hundred-and-ten-year history, the Sunshine has produced millions of tons of lead, zinc, and copper; and over 360 million ounces of silver.

On the morning of May 2, 1972, 173 miners arrived at the Sunshine Mine to start their work day. Surface and underground foreman took charge of activities while principal operating officials, who would normally have been present, attended the annual stockholders' meeting in Coeur d'Alene. Shortly before midday, two electricians began shouting warnings when they smelled smoke shortly after leaving their shop. Unable to locate the source of the fire, they alerted the foremen. Men were sent with verbal warnings, but most miners only became aware of the blaze when the smoke entered their workplaces.

The fire was located on the air intake side of the mine, circulating deadly carbon monoxide throughout the main airways. Many of the exits were blocked by smoke and only a few men could be hoisted out at a time. Working under dangerous conditions, rescuers evacuated as many miners as they could, but after eighty men were hauled out, the hoist operator died. After the hoist man's death, only two more miners were rescued.

By the time rescue personnel arrived at 2:00pm, ninety-one miners had died from smoke inhalation. The rescue crews attempted to locate and extract any survivors, but in the end they could only recover bodies. The cause of the fire was thought to be the spontaneous combustion of some refuse near scrap timber, according to The Bureau of Mines. The Sunshine Mine disaster was the worst mining tragedy in the Idaho's history.

In front of you stands the impressive Sunshine Miners Memorial, erected by sculptor Ken Lonn. This monument was not placed here to memorialize the tons of silver that were extracted from the surrounding mountains. Instead, this memorial commemorates the ninety-one miners who lost their lives in one of the most horrific mining disasters to date.

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