Why Nobody Lives in Wallace, Idaho Anymore: The Silver Capital of the World

Wallace, Idaho was the Silver Capital of the World - the railroad and office town of the Coeur d'Alene mining district, the richest silver district in America. Today fewer than eight hundred people live there, fewer than in 1890. This is the story of how Wallace grew out of a doubtful land claim in 1884, survived fires, labor wars and martial law, made a cook and a train engineer into millionaires, lost ninety-one men in the Sunshine Mine fire of 1972 - and fought the federal government for more than a decade to save its downtown from Interstate 90. Wallace won. Every building was saved. And in the same years, silver crashed, the big mines closed and the people left. Where are you watching from? Did your family work the mines of the Silver Valley? Tell us in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Town That Won, and Emptied 1:39 Before the Silver 3:28 Silver, a Jackass and a Colonel 5:41 Who Owned the Hole 8:16 Dynamite and the Bullpens 11:46 The Cook and the Engineer 13:30 The Mountains Caught Fire 14:50 The Little City in the Canyon 16:24 The Fight for Every Building 18:07 The Worst Day Underground 19:46 Silver Thursday 22:06 Groceries on the Counter 23:19 The Last Stoplight 24:46 The Center of the Universe 26:53 Everything the Silver Built 28:33 Your Family's Silver Valley Sources: Wikipedia ("Wallace, Idaho"; "Sunshine Mine"; "Hecla Mining"; "May Arkwright Hutton"); KSPS PBS, "Silver Linings: The Early Days of Idaho's Silver Valley" (2001); Idaho Humanities Council, "The History of Wallace, Idaho" (2020); Spokane Historical, "A Brief History of Wallace"; Mine Safety and Health Administration, "Sunshine Mine Disaster"; Idaho GenWeb; The Christian Science Monitor (December 8, 1981); Financial History magazine (issue 120); Hutton Settlement history; Jalopnik; Idaho Transportation Department "Transporter" (2005); Rick Just, Speaking of Idaho; The Seattle Times (July 28 and September 16, 1996); Mel Magazine; Legends of America; Britannica ("Silver Thursday"). CREDITS Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0: "Anamalie" "Night on the Docks - Trumpet" "Mirage" "Heavy Heart" "Cryptic Sorrow" "Gymnopedie No. 3" Other music: Mixkit Stock Music Free License and Pixabay Content License (Eugenio Mininni, Michael Ramir C., Ahjay Stelino, Music_for_Creators and Pixabay artists). Archive film: US National Archives, "Silver: Heirlooms of Tomorrow" (US Bureau of Mines); Mine Safety and Health Administration, "Stop Silicosis" (1938) - via the Internet Archive, public domain. Photographs: University of Idaho Library Digital Collections (Barnard-Stockbridge Photograph Collection, Idaho Cities and Towns, George W. Tabor Photographs, Northwest Historical Postcards, Archival Idaho), Wikimedia Commons (public domain and Creative Commons - CC BY / CC BY-SA, authors and licences in the sources file), National Archives (NARA), University of Washington Digital Collections, Library of Congress / HABS-HAER, US Forest Service, US EPA, Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Weekly (1892, 1899; Internet Archive scans), Flickr photographers (CC BY / CC BY-SA / CC BY-NC), Northern Pacific Depot Railroad Museum (npdepot.org), Idaho Transportation Department, Shoshone News-Press, Coeur d'Alene Press, The Spokesman-Review, KREM, Shoshone County IDGenWeb, findheatherlee.com and others - full list with links in the sources file. Present-day video excerpts courtesy of independent creators on YouTube: Northern Illusions, Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson, davidegg22, American City Walks, Perfect Destination, AuggieDogProduction, The Roamin' Ohmanns and WallaceIdaho83873. #AmericanHometown #WallaceIdaho #SilverValley