Wallace’s silver lining
Wallace is known historically for silver mining, railroads and … well, its former red-light district.
While Wallace doesn’t hide its bawdy past, today its reputation is growing as a great place to ride a bike. The Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, a 73-mile asphalt path in North Idaho’s Silver Valley, runs through the town’s front yard.
Exploring its restaurants, antique shops and museums is best done on foot or bike. Yes, you can drive your car around Wallace, but the town is so small and tightly laid out that it seems more logical to walk.
My husband, John, and I enjoyed the warm sunlight one recent afternoon while walking our dog Kah-less before supper. Several American flags waved in the breeze along the streets of Wallace’s historic business district. The sun was slowly descending behind a round, green ridge of the Bitterroot Mountains.
In a back doorway of the Sixth Street Melodrama Theater, two children wearing their stage costumes waited for a show to start. They were part of the playhouse’s first-ever children’s production since the community theater’s founding roughly 21 years ago.
The theater group plans to do more shows featuring young casts. And the volunteer troupe will continue hosting old-fashioned “boo and hiss” plays, as it has for many summers. “Black Deeds in Whitehorse” starts the season in July, followed in August by “A Golden Fleecing.”
The heroine-villain formula plots encourage audience participation, according to Lija Pittman, director of “Black Deeds.” Pittman changed the villain to a villainess for this story about a fur pelt smuggler, set in a loggers’ lodge in the Yukon Territory.
Audience participation isn’t encouraged, it’s required, said Pittman.
“We ask them to leave if they don’t boo and hiss,” she said, then chuckled.
Each summer performance is followed by a vaudeville review. “Music, skits, bad jokes … it’s a lot of fun,” said Don Sauer, president of the theater’s board of directors.
Sunny weather was replaced by sprinkling rain the next morning. Before exploring more of downtown Wallace, we walked a section of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes. Much of this trail follows an old rail line constructed in the late 1880s to transport silver and timber from the valley.
The original rail bed was built with materials containing heavy metals. It was also contaminated with accidental ore concentrate spillage. The Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes is part of an environmental cleanup project to isolate contaminants and allow the area to be used once again.
A free brochure, available at many locations in town, includes helpful information: map, pet policy (on the leash, and pick it up), trail rules and precautions for avoiding contamination by exposure to off-trail soil (basically, stay on the trail). Bring your bike, in-line skates or comfortable sneakers, but no motorized vehicles.
A light buffer of vegetation separated us from the hum of Interstate 90 as we walked the trail. A wall of green trees, ferns and flowers rose up on the opposite side. A vine of lavender, bell-shaped flowers wrapped its leaves within the needles of a short fir tree. This plant, known as Columbia Virgin’s Bower, grows in cool, shady places of the Inland Northwest.
After our energetic walk and breathing in cool, fresh air, we drove back to downtown Wallace for a narrated tour of the Oasis Bordello Museum. Museum owner Michelle Mayfield (“Miss Lillie”) locked the front door to the antique and gift shop before leading us through a side door and up a flight of stairs.
The building at 605 Cedar St. operated as a bordello from 1895 to 1988. Each upstairs room has been left as it was when former occupants, part of a Seattle-based prostitution ring, fled town in a hurry. The women feared they would be swept up in an FBI corruption case against local officials.
Cigarettes stubbed out nearly two decades ago still rest in a glass ashtray, now sealed forever in plastic. Personal effects are scattered about: perfume bottles, brushes and jewelry on bureaus and vanities, a stuffed yellow elephant on a bed, a letterman’s jacket carelessly left by a Montana State University student.
In one room, a mannequin wearing a curly brown wig resembles the accompanying pencil sketch of the young woman who once worked and slept there.
With her presentation, Mayfield takes visitors back to Wallace’s early beginning as a rowdy silver mining camp through to the 1980s. The narration is based on historical data and conversations with a former madam, policemen, hairdressers and other witnesses to this intriguing past – including a surprise guest who stopped by one day to see her old room.
The town’s determination to rise from the ashes of two great fires, in 1890 and 1910, has left enduring brick buildings, some designed by nationally known architects from the turn of the century. The second fire was possibly the largest forest fire in American history, burning 3 million acres of virgin timberland.
A complimentary guide to Wallace offers history on the fires and the town’s most colorful residents and historic structures. The publication is available at most local retail shops, museums and hotels.
John and Kah-less waited on the lawn of the Northern Pacific Depot Museum while I went in for a quick peek at the exhibits.
The depot, a critical link to outside markets for the mining industry, also was a point of social gatherings and sometimes excitement. Wallace residents greeted President Theodore Roosevelt on a rainy day in 1903 and scenes were shot at the depot in 1979 for the movie “Heaven’s Gate.”
By the way, Wallace has another Hollywood connection: It was the birthplace and childhood home of movie star Lana Turner before she moved to California, where she was discovered as a teenager.
Turner is best known for her “sweater girl” pin-up image and roles in the 1946 movie “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and 1975’s “Peyton Place.”