Blue View – A Town Founded by a Jackass

Mining history in Silver Valley is everywhere. A mill outside Wallace.

We spent more than a week biking through and exploring the Silver Valley, the silver mining area east of Coeur d’Alene. The valley still retains its old west, mining atmosphere, and, in fact, quite a few mines are still in operation. Many of the town names reflect their mining heritage… Silver Mountain, Silverton, Smeltersville, and Smelter Heights to name a few. Two of these towns, Kellogg and Wallace, were particularly interesting.

Kellogg

Noah Kellogg was an unsuccessful gold prospector and part-time carpenter who lived in the town of Murray, ID. In 1885, he talked two local businessmen, O. O. Peck and Dr. J. T. Cooper into grubstaking him – giving him money for tools, food and a donkey in exchange for a share in whatever he found. He set out prospecting along the Coeur d’Alene River. After an unprofitable day, he made camp in Milo Gulch, ate and went to bed. Sometime during the night, his donkey wandered off, and when he got up in the morning, he set out looking for the animal. He heard it braying, and spotted him high up on a hillside. As he climbed up to retrieve the donkey, he saw the sun glittering on something shiny at the donkey’s feet, which turned out to be a large outcropping of galena… a lead ore that often contains silver. He had just discovered what became one of the largest silver producing mines in the world, the Bunker Hill Mine. Kellogg named the town that was founded there after himself, and this is why there is a local sign that reads “This is the town founded by a jackass and inhabited by his descendants”.

By 1982 when the Bunker Hill Mine finally closed, it had yielded more than 140,000,000 tons of ore and had a network of almost 120 miles of shafts and tunnels. It was also, however, along with the Bunker Hill Smelter, a major contributor to the pollution of the area rivers, lakes, ground water and air. For example, after two Kellogg children were hospitalized for lead poisoning in 1974, the CDC investigated and found that almost all children living within two miles of the smelter had significant lead in their systems, with one child having “the highest lead level ever recorded”. The Shoshone County Health Department found that approximately 26% of all two-year-olds in the region had dangerously high lead levels in their blood.

The smelter became one of the largest EPA superfund sites. Eventually, the EPA spent $200 million dollars in remediation efforts and the owners of the mine and smelter eventually settled a lawsuit filed by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe for an additional $267 million dollars towards clean-up. Much has been done in the years since – the mines and smelter have greatly reduced the amounts of pollution they produce from air emissions and the leeching of heavy metals into the ground water and rivers, and Kellogg is a pleasant, somewhat touristy, small town that we enjoyed visiting. But we didn’t drink the water.

The Kellogg Mining Museum - unfortunately closed despite the Open sign

Wallace

Wallace is a very pleasant town close to the Montana border about 11 miles from Kellogg. It has lots of restaurants, shops and museums, including a bordello museum, as well as mining and railroad museums. Most of these were closed due to the pandemic while we were there, but we did get to visit the mining museum and the old railroad station. It was founded in 1884 and has seen its share of booms and busts. It was nearly destroyed three times, but its resilient residents managed to save the town each time.

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The first disaster was the mining wars. The mines were producing vast riches in gold and silver, but mining conditions were dangerous and the miners were treated and paid poorly. Between 1892 and 1990, two major labor disputes led to the “blowing up of mills, trains and people, mass arrests and incarcerations, declarations of martial law and the assassination of a former Idaho governor”.

Wallace was also almost destroyed by the horrendous wildfire of 1910 – still the worst forest fire in U.S. history. It claimed 80 lives and burned 3 million acres in 36 hours, including a third of Wallace. Teddy Roosevelt used that sacrifice of men and material to secure the forestry service’s mission to preserve our national forests.

I’ll write more about the Great Fire of 1910 in a future blog

Finally, the construction of I-90 almost dealt the town a death blow. The original plan for the freeway was to build it right over the middle of town. A local businessman, Harry Magnuson, led the fight to stop what would have been the demolition of much of historic Wallace. He sued transportation officials for not complying with federal environmental laws, which halted the construction for several years while the court case was fought. Meanwhile, the residents of Wallace put every building in the town on the National Register of Historic Places. The court case was eventually resolved in the government’s favor, but since the entire town was now listed as an historic place, the highway had to be rerouted via an overpass on the north side of the town. The only building affected by the new routing was the old train station, which was moved, intact, to a spot a few hundred feet away and well clear of the new highway. It’s now been restored and houses quite a fine museum.

The new home of the restored Wallace Station. Note the I-90 overpass in the background.

Some trivia: Wallace had the last stoplight on the entire 3100 mile, coast-to-coast length of Interstate 90. When the overpass was completed, the stoplight was bypassed, of course. Wallace held a funeral for the stoplight. It was placed in a horse-drawn hearse and driven through town accompanied by bagpipers. It now rests in peace at the Wallace Mining Museum.