Wallace, Idaho is a city in and the county chair of Shoshone County, Idaho, in the Silver Valley mining district of the Idaho Panhandle. Founded in 1884, Wallace sits contiguously the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River (and Interstate 90), approximately 2,730 feet (830 m) above sea level. The town’s population was 784 at the 2010 census.

Wallace is the principal town of the Coeur d’Alene silver-mining district, which produced more silver than any additional mining district in the United States. Burke-Canyon Road runs through historic mining communities – many of them now deserted – north and eastward toward the Montana confess line. The ghost town of Burke, Idaho is located 7 miles (11 km) to the northeast. East of Wallace, the Route of the Hiawatha (rails-to-trails) and the Lookout Pass ski Place are popular subsequent to locals and tourists.

Wallace came into being upon a river plain where four streams and five canyons converge onto the course of the South Fork. The primordial known white fascination in the area was the construction of the Mullan Road, which followed the South Fork from close Cataldo around to the pass that crossed into Montana. John Mullan did observe promising quartz outcroppings along their route as soon as he passed through in late 1859. However, he progressive frankly stated that he downplayed the possibility of gold to his building crews because he “feared that any rich discovery would pro to a general stampede” to search for it.

A long hiatus followed until Andrew J. Prichard entered the country in search of gold. After several years of searching, he finally found pay-dirt on a stream virtually twelve miles north of the cutting edge Wallace in the spring of 1882. That set off a “general stampede” into the region, especially during the past year. Eagle City, Prichard, Murrayville (quickly reduced to Murray) and supplementary mining camps sprang into existence and claims proliferated. It did not accept long for knowledgeable miners to discover that the value of the placer gold in the region would be dwarfed by the material comfort in silver, buried in vast silver-lead lodes. Naturally, prospectors spread additional and further afield.