August 26, Wallace Idaho

Today we got up early and we headed from Missoula towards Idaho. I had looked up on the Internet and there weren’t any RV parks in Wallace, so I looked in Kellogg but there wasn’t much to choose from there either, but I did find a Good Sam park in Osborne, Idaho which is halfway between Wallace and Kellogg. It was a nice little park, with pull through sites, clean showers and full hook-ups. We got all set up and then decided to head into Wallace to check out the town.

We found a tour of the local Sierra Silver Mine and unfortunately they would not let us take the dog, so we decided to see if Lindy could be trusted by herself in the motor home. So we took her back to the campsite, turned the air conditioner on and closed all the blinds and left here a big bowl of water. We then headed back into Wallace to check out the mine. The tour begins at the ticket office when you board a trolley. On the trip to and from the mine the driver tells you some of the history of Wallace and points out many of the historic buildings. The entire City of Wallace is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Once you got to the mine we were each fitted with a hard hat and got our picture taken. Our guide was a retired miner who starts off with a brief overview of the fundamentals of hard-rock mining. The tour itself is about 1000 feet through a U shaped tunnel that is actually quite roomy, the surface is smooth, there are no ups or downs or tight spaces. The Sierra Mine was discovered around 1900; unfortunately the ore bodies were never very rich, with only about ½ oz of silver per ton of ore assayed. The ownership of the mine changed hands many times and wasn’t really worked until around the early 1960’s when an incline shaft was sunk that ran a drift for about 100 feet. The miners ran out of money and work halted again. A few years later another mine ran a drift two hundred feet below the mine and hit a very rich vein of ore, just another example of a near miss in mining history. The mine remained idle until it was decided to use it as classroom to teach local high school students mining skills.

There were some great demos of how the various mining equipment worked, they were vary noisy and fun to watch. The tour guide was a retired miner who decided that it was safer and paid almost as well to do the tours instead of continuing mining. After the mine tour we headed we all got back on the Trolley and headed back towards town. The driver then took us on a tour around town and pointed out some of the historical buildings. The train depot is very cool they actually moved the entire building when they built the interstate. They have a movie of the move in the local museum.

When we got back to the Trolley Depot we were treated to a melodrama about Ed Pulaski. Pulaski is a local hero who on August 20, 1910, was credited with saving all but five of his 45-man crew during what is known as the "Great Idaho Fire. It had been unusually dry that year and about five miles south of Wallace, a fire suddenly broke out of control, overwhelming the crew, because of his knowledge of the area and of the dynamics of forest fires, Pulaski led his men to safety in an abandoned prospect mine. After ordering his crew into an abandoned mine tunnel, he threatened to shoot with his pistol any man who left, all but five of the firefighters survived, but two horses with them died from smoke inhalation. The US Forest Service's Pulaski Tunnel Trail near Wallace, ID, provides access to the Nicholson Mine site where Pulaski and his team took shelter.

Ed Pulaski is also credited for the invention of the Pulaski in 1911, a hand tool commonly used in wild land firefighting; it is a combination hand tool with a mattock for digging or grubbing on one side and an axe for chopping on the other.

So now it was time to head back to the campsite and check on Lindy. When we got back there was a fellow camper sitting outside so we checked with him to see if he had heard anything coming from the motor home. He told us no and said that he had just recently notice a small little head poking out from the bottom of the blind, but that she hadn’t barked or anything. So that was good to hear. It does make it a little easier to go to place now that we know that we can leave her from short periods of time. Especially if we are somewhere that we can turn on the air conditioner so that she is comfortable. So we had a good supper, watched a movie and then off to bed.