Idaho

The Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes is a 72-mile, non-motorized recreational path that runs from Plummer, Idaho, a farming community and headquarters for the Coeur d’Alene tribe, northeast along Lake Coeur D’Alene and the Coeur d’Alene River Basin, to the town of Mullan, six miles west of the Idaho-Montana border.

Twin Falls’ Perrine Bridge serves as an effective connector for multiple economic and cultural functions in South Central Idaho. It spans State Highway 93 across the Snake River Canyon, which, before 1927, had effectively separated the north and south sides of the Magic Valley. It is the only bridge leading directly into Twin Falls from I-84; the city would be isolated without it. The Hansen Bridge, located eight miles upstream, and the Owsley Bridge near Hagerman, twenty miles downstream, are too far away to effectively transport goods and people in and out of the city.

Idaho entrepreneur Ira B. Perrine, along with other investors, envisioned creating a town in the middle of a sagebrush desert. This landscape formerly attracted lone fur trappers, miners, and ranch hands, but Perrine’s vision, salesmanship, and persistence convinced families east of the Missouri to move across the continent to put down roots in a desolate part of South Idaho.

Prominently located in the commercial hub of Twin Falls, on Main and Shoshone streets, the Twin Falls Bank and Trust served as an economic anchor to the precarious existence of an early farming community on a desolate stretch of the old Oregon Trail. Completed six years after the town’s founding, the bank’s early success and classical styling would have suited the ambitious vision of the town’s founder, I.B. Perrine.

The Twin Falls Warehouse Historic District echoes the regional culture and economy of the past and present. Built shortly after the town’s 1904 founding, the warehouse district stored, processed, and distributed products needed to serve an agricultural economy. By the 1970s, when larger, more modern warehouses began to relocate across Rock Creek Canyon to the south, the original warehouse district showed signs of abandonment and neglect.

The valleys in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains in northern Idaho are so narrow and deep that the sun strikes their bottoms only during midday, even in the summer. In 1883, thousands of prospectors stampeded into the area on rumors of gold in the rivers. They crossed the mountains from Thompson Falls, Montana, the nearest stop along the Northern Pacific Railroad’s newly constructed transcontinental route. No major gold veins were discovered, but prospectors did discover silver-bearing galena ore that made the Coeur d’Alenes one of the most successful silver-mining areas in the world.

Emblematic of the streetscapes of downtown Wallace is the Coeur d’Alene Hardware Company, a half-block west of the Rossi Insurance Building. The J.R. Marks and Company built a brick structure on the same lot where its frame hardware store burnt in the town’s 1890 fire. In 1892, the owners merged with the Holley-Mason Store in Spokane to become the largest outlet in the area, changing their name to the Coeur d’Alene Hardware and Foundry Company, which went on to become a major producer of mining equipment for the northwestern United States.

Anchoring the north end of Sixth Street is the Northern Pacific Railway Depot. The Chateauesque building is a stunning example of the types of stations that the Northern Pacific and other railways erected along their tracks. It features a cut stone foundation, brick first story, and stuccoed concrete second story beneath a steeply pitched hipped roof. A three-story tower with a conical roof occupies the southeast corner of the building, and a pent roof separates the first and second stories on the main facade.

The intersection of Sixth and Bank streets contains an imposing group of buildings in downtown Wallace. What is now the Rossi Insurance Building was erected as a one-story building in 1890 for the Bank of Wallace, which failed within the year; it was replaced by the First National Bank of Wallace in 1892. The second story and pressed-metal turret were added in 1895, mimicking the White and Bender Building across Sixth Street. The rear entrance features double doors with leaded glass, which are topped with a fan window pattern of elaborate leaded glass.

Idaho produces up to one third of the nation’s potatoes and they are the state’s most profitable agricultural commodity, generating nearly a billion dollars annually. Thus, potato storage cellars are common on many southern Idaho’s farms. Although the state produces over 30 varieties, its most popular are the Russet Burbank and Russet Norkotah, used for baking, french fries, and processed potatoes; southern Idaho’s rich volcanic soil assures their distinctive taste.