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Wallace, Idaho (population 1,000) is among the coolest small towns in America. The magazine Budget Travel touts Wallace’s mining history and some of the salacious activities that went along with it. The article suggests an affordable trip to the Oasis Bordello Museum. The magazine’s website also notes the town’s access to bike trails, The Red Light Garage (“a cafe decorated with vintage musical instruments”) and the Wallace Brewing Company. Photo Courtesy: www.google.com.
Question: Can you think of a cooler little town than Wallace, Idaho?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
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LukeB on September 28 at 1:56 p.m.
Depends on how you define “little” … but I'm a big fan of Nelson, B.C. myself.
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spokelooneh on September 28 at 7:31 p.m.
Nelson's a very cool town.
I would also suggest Sandpoint as a cooler little town that Wallace, of course it has 6 times as many residents as Wallace, but I consider anything less than 15K residents as a little town.
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JohnA on September 28 at 10:18 p.m.
The coolest thing about Wallace has always been its people. Down to earth, care about your neighbor, and always look after your partner underground.
Of course, Wallace is not now what it once was. Like the Deadwoods and Virginia Citys of the West, it is an old mine camp turned tourist attraction. I mean, a bordello museum?
Wallace in the past was a rollicking good time, no matter your take on the morals of the place. It was good for what's bad, a dissertation on disapation if there ever was one. It was corrupt officials elected time and again, and a Madam who bought uniforms for the high school band. It was high stakes stud poker, blackjack and dancing girls at every turn.
It was, simply to us locals, Slippery Gulch.
But, most of all, it was the Old West as it once was, when minin' men went to town on Friday night and owed their soul to the company store the rest of the week.
Wallace is cool now, but old Wallace was unique. I miss the old girl, nearly twenty years now gone.
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Northerner on September 29 at 7:18 a.m.
Considering I am from Mullan, I cannot comment positively on Wallace, I would lose my Mullan Card.
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Arpie on September 29 at 7:41 a.m.
I took my class there for a field trip last year. No, we didn't go to the bordello museum -or the brewery. I have never seen people prouder of their town than all we came in contact with there.
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Bent on September 29 at 9:04 a.m.
I lived in Wallace for a few years. I loved it. JohnA is right on the money about the people who live there. It was like stepping back into the 70s …
The timing of this post is interesting to me…
My sister-in-law, who is from Alaska, just returned with her husband from a week-long trip touring the sites and cities of Idaho…
The highlight of the trip? The Bordello Museum in Wallace… aside from being denied liquor in a restaurant in Idaho Falls on a Sunday, all they could talk about was the history they learned at the Museum
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