As we approach the summer months of 2010, you can expect to see newspapers in the Northwest offering up centennal coverage of the 1910 fires which scorched millions of acres in Idaho and Montana, and small areas of neighboring states. One of the hardest-hit places was Wallace, Idaho, and the nearby infrastructure of NP's route over Lookout Pass and MILW's more famous St. Paul Pass.

A different aspect of Wallace history appears in this morning's Coeur d'Alene Press (cdapress.com). A short stretch of Wallace city streets has just been named in honor of the late local business man Harry Magnuson. When I first moved to north Idaho in 1984, I-90 didn't have a true freeway through Wallace. The interstate traveled nearly two miles on surface streets; Wallace was noted for having the last remaining stop light on I-90. By 1986, they were gearing up for the monumental project of moving the NP depot from the north side of the river to the south, in order to make way for a new I-90 bypass. What I didn't know then was that Magnuson and others had successfully prevented the federal government from bulldozing a freeway corridor through Wallace back in the 1970s. The NP depot and eventually ALL of the city of Wallace were protected under the National Register of Historic Places.

UP's Kellogg Turn was still operating then, a two-day trip once or twice a week. Typical run was Spokane to Kellogg, Idaho, on the first day, then on the second day it was Kellogg east through Wallace to switch the one remaining mine loadout at Mullan, and head all the way back to Spokane. On the way home, they'd pick up woodchips at Enaville and then STMA interchange at Plummer. In order to accommodate the railroad and not destroy half of the city of Wallace, the I-90 bypass was built as an elevated corridor along the city's north side, tons of steel and concrete literally suspended above the track for what I estimate is almost half a mile.

Today, the track is gone, and the 72-mile Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes between Plummer and Mullan is touted as the longest paved rail-trail in the country. I don't know if Magnuson realized it back in the day, but his refusal to let Idaho be "bulldozed" by the feds helped to preserve some vital Northwest rail history, and then some.