Every building in this Idaho canyon town is on the National Register of Historic Places

It’s got the manhole cover to prove it

Wallace, Idaho, sits in a canyon in the Bitterroot Mountains, about 84 miles east of Spokane. The whole town runs four by nine blocks, and 791 people call it home.

Every building downtown landed on the National Register of Historic Places. You can walk the whole thing in 15 minutes, but you’ll want a lot longer than that.

Between the underground mines, rail trails, and a wildfire story that changed American history, this little Silver Valley town packs more into a few blocks than most cities manage in a few miles.

A Civil War veteran built a cabin and started it all

Colonel William R. Wallace put up a cabin here in 1884 at a spot he called Placer Center. The silver kept coming.

The region around Wallace has produced over 1.2 billion ounces of silver since mining started, which is how it earned the name Silver Capital of the World.

When the interstate threatened to flatten downtown in the 1970s, residents fought back and won. The compromise sent an elevated freeway over the town, and the Victorian-era buildings stayed right where they were.

A manhole cover marks the exact center of everything

On Sept. 25, 2004, Mayor Ron Garitone declared Wallace the Center of the Universe. The logic was simple and perfectly sideways.

The EPA had tagged the town as a Superfund site but admitted it could not prove whether lead contamination came from mining or from the ground itself.

Garitone flipped the argument: if nobody can prove Wallace is not the center of the universe, then it is.

A custom manhole cover at Bank and Sixth Street marks the spot, and the town throws a rededication festival every year.

Ride 15 miles through 10 tunnels on the Hiawatha

The Route of the Hiawatha follows a former Milwaukee Railroad line through the Bitterroots between Idaho and Montana. You start by rolling into the St. Paul Pass Tunnel, which stretches 1.66 miles through the mountain.

From there, you cross seven trestles high above the valley floor.

The whole 15-mile route drops on a gentle 1.6 percent grade, so you don’t need mountain biking legs to finish it. Shuttle buses haul you and your bike back to the top.

A 73-mile paved trail runs right through town

The Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes stretches from Mullan near the Montana border to Plummer near Washington, and it passes straight through Wallace.

You follow the Coeur d’Alene River, ride past Lake Coeur d’Alene, and cross the Chatcolet Bridge along the way. The trail opened in 2004 on a former Union Pacific Railroad bed as part of an environmental cleanup effort.

It earned a spot in the Rail-Trail Hall of Fame in 2010 and stays open year-round, with groomed sections for snowmobiling and cross-country skiing in winter.

Retired miners guide you into a real silver mine

The Sierra Silver Mine Tour puts you underground in an actual mine, and the people showing you around are retired miners who worked these tunnels.

They fire up the pneumatic equipment and tell firsthand stories about life in the rock. Before you go down, a narrated trolley ride takes you through historic downtown Wallace.

Tours run from May through mid-October and leave every 30 minutes. The mine holds steady at about 50 degrees, so grab a light jacket before you board.

Hurricane-force winds turned 3 million acres to ash

In August 1910, winds merged hundreds of small fires across Idaho, Montana and Washington into a single firestorm that burned 3 million acres in two days. About a third of Wallace went up in flames.

Passenger trains rushed thousands of residents to Spokane and Missoula.

The fire killed 87 people, most of them firefighters, and stood as the deadliest wildfire event in U.S. history for over 90 years.

The disaster forced the country to rethink wildfire policy and led to new national forests.

Ed Pulaski held his crew at gunpoint to save them

Forest ranger Ed Pulaski was fighting fires about five miles south of Wallace when the firestorm closed in on Aug. 20, 1910.

He led roughly 45 men to an abandoned mine tunnel, ordered them face down on the muddy floor, and hung wet blankets over the entrance. He told anyone who tried to run that he would shoot them.

All but five survived. Pulaski came out temporarily blind with burned lungs and skin.

He later designed a combination axe-and-mattock tool that firefighters still carry today.

Three museums and a bordello frozen in 1988

The Wallace District Mining Museum holds over 50 exhibits and 5,000 photos covering the Coeur d’Alene Mining District, including the original Pulaski tool prototype.

Down the street, the Northern Pacific Depot Railroad Museum fills a restored 1901 chateau-style train station. Then there’s the Oasis Bordello Museum, a former establishment that operated until 1988.

When the occupants left, they left everything behind. You walk through rooms exactly as they were, down to the personal items on the nightstands.

Ski 70 trails or ride 1,000 miles of snowmobile roads

Lookout Pass Ski Area sits 12 miles east at the Idaho-Montana state line, and the snow comes heavy. Silver Mountain Resort in nearby Kellogg has over 70 trails across a mix of terrain.

If you’d rather ride than ski, the area around Wallace connects to more than 1,000 miles of groomed snowmobile trails built on old mining and forest service roads.

You can also cross-country ski the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes between Wallace and Mullan when the eastern section gets groomed for winter.

Find taxidermy, gemstones and crowd-participation plays

North Idaho Trading Company calls itself the “weirdest little shop in the Northwest,” and the mix of oddities, antiques and taxidermy backs that up.

Johnson’s Gems holds one of the largest gem and mineral collections in the inland Northwest.

The Sixth Street Melodrama theater sits inside the only wood building that survived the 1890 fire, and the audience gets to join in during shows.

Wallace Brewing Company pours beers named after local mining and bordello history in a room that feels like an old-time saloon.

Hike to the tunnel that saved 40 lives in 1910

The Pulaski Tunnel Trail runs two miles up Placer Creek to the mine tunnel where Ed Pulaski sheltered his crew. The grade is moderate, and you end up standing at a site on the National Register of Historic Places.

If you want something easier, Upper Glidden Lake is a short walk through mixed forest to an alpine lake.

Silver Streak Zipline sends riders above the mountains, and off-road vehicle rentals let you explore the web of backcountry mining and logging roads winding through the Bitterroots.

Visit Wallace on your next Idaho road trip

You can reach Wallace by taking Exit 61 off Interstate 90 in Idaho’s Panhandle. It sits about 84 miles east of Spokane and roughly an hour from Coeur d’Alene.

The downtown is compact enough to cover on foot, with museums, shops and restaurants all within a few blocks of each other.

If you’re driving I-90 between Spokane and Missoula or heading toward Glacier National Park, Wallace makes a perfect stop, and you’ll want more time than you planned for.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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