What About Wallace!? (Cascade, Pierce, Clark Fork: 2014, club, store)

[Toyman at Jewel Lake]

Wallace is a great little town, and one area I would consider moving to when I retire. We frequently spend weekends there, they have some of the best ATV/dirt bike riding access in the country. The whole town is very pro-OHV recreation, ATVs, bikes and snowmobiles (I believe) are all encouraged on city streets. It's kinda fun when there is a rally or club ride, much of the main street parking is lines of quads.

[javatom]

I would not find any of what you list as desirable. To each his own.

[pw72]

Originally Posted by VelvetSky

I think Wallace is absolutely beautiful but before you move check flooding. I thought they had some crazy flood there many years ago. Maybe someone else who is more familiar with the area can be better help. We have only visited. But the downtown is gorgeous!

Some quick research brings up some floods around a century ago, but nothing recently. The last I could find was 1933. Are you sure you are not thinking of the Teton Dam flood of 1976, that devasted Rexburg, on the other side of the state?

[VelvetSky]

No I think the 1933 is the one I was thinking when I was doing some research of the area. I think there are pictures out there of it. Does the river run through Wallace? I thought because it is canyon like with a river it might have flooding.
I am always worried about floods after living in Vegas. So I always try to find out. We almost moved to Nashville and then we canceled for unforseen circumstances. But that month we would of moved there, all of Nashville flooded. They call it the hundred year flood. Peoples homes were destroyed. So now I am always making sure I don't build my house in a flood zone. LOL

I also wonder about the 'hundred year flood' phrase and how accurate it is. Do they just say that to appease people? Do they really know? Weather is so unpredictable. My husband always says he should of been a weather man instead of I.T. Because you can be wrong almost 90% of the time and no one will care. LOL We always joke about it. Today will be sunny and cool.....oops sorry windy and rainy with dark clouds....maybe tomorrow will be sunny.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

I was just watching Dante's Peak yesterday (just flicking channels), and you probably already know that it was filmed in Wallace, but I'd forgotten how much it showcases the town! If you want to get an impression of Wallace, and even the mountains around Wallace, watch the movie. Not counting the BIG VOLCANO, of course! That's matted in. The footage from atop the volcano is from somewhere in the Cascades. But I'm fairly sure the trails and the valley views are from around Wallace. One fun factoid: They neglected to remove/block a Wallace sign. When the camera pans down toward the crowd at the town meeting in the beginning of the movie you can clearly see a big sign on a store saying Wallace somethingorother, maybe it is a hardware store?

Oh, in case you start worrying: when the poor town of Dante's Peak is torn apart by the volcanic eruption...well...that's Hollywood!

[Native Idahoan]

CFF, I actually own that movie because it brings back so many memories. I had a friend over to watch it and he remarked what a fantastic mountain! Oh I laughed SO hard! Had to explain that's not really there. LOL

[pw72]

I believe the once in a hundred year flood term actually means a 1 in 100 chance. As any gambler knows, this could still mean it could happen two years in a row. While not logical, it still is simple math.

[cujo1950]

When I was looking at homes in the Silver Valley, as I looked them up on FEMA flood zone maps ( they're available free online but hard to find), many homes located all through the valley are in "flood zones" which requires buyer to buy very expensive flood insursnce. It ran 1200 - 1800 bucks a year on top of normal home insurance. Something to check on.

[northbayeric]

Originally Posted by pw72

Wallace is an interesting little historic town. I'm sure the nearby mountains would be a nice place to live. However, it is extremely isolated, as in the closest real town would be Coeur d'Alene to the west, (over an hour) or Spokane (90minutes) even further west. Trivia, Wallace was the last town with a stop light on I-90, corrected with a bypass viaduct in the early 90's. Also, watch your speed through this part of Idaho, it drops from 75 in Montana to 55 around Wallace, with a gradual increase (65) into Kellogg, and it IS enforced.

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, Wallace is pretty isolated as far as its location to larger cities goes. I'm just glad it's right along I-90. Speaking of which, you do have to watch the downhill curves as you're heading west toward the Silver Valley from Lookout Pass at the Montana-Idaho border. It's really easy to go too fast if you've never been along this part of I-90 before. Thankfully the weather conditions were good and the sun not in our faces our first time in this very scenic part of the freeway!

[northbayeric]

Originally Posted by dcisive

Consider the ramifications of the relationship between big mining and the EPA here in Salt Lake City. The residing giant polluter for the last 100+ years here of course is Kennicott Copper/Rio Tinto. They have a huge advertising component that brags about how environmentally friendly they are and have been while they poison the wildlife and public all around us. Their land holdings are huge and they did a development called "Daybreak" where one signs off on a legal document acknowledging the inability to grow certain things on the land their homes reside on due to residual deposits (nice word for toxins) placed in the soil. I can't wait for the next cancer cluster to start showing up in the next decade there. The cancer rates in the Salt Lake Valley are certainly alarming to say the least, and yet the almighty dollar continues to rule all for the sake of "jobs". I really feel for those that are so consumed with the ideals of having employment at the cost of their lives and the lives of their loved ones. It's quite sad really.

Thanks for sharing this info! Without going off on a tangent, I didn't know about this situation in the Salt Lake Valley. As someone who grew up in the St. Louis area, I well remember when the town of Times Beach, Missouri was evacuated for dioxin contamination in the early 1980s. So I'd be interested in whatever information sources you might have re the Salt Lake Valley. I have a Mormon friend who frequently travels to Salt Lake City and the surrounding area.

Getting back to Wallace, the next time my wife and I travel up there, I'll try getting more feedback about the EPA and mining contamination, but I saw absolutely no visible evidence whatsoever of such contamination either time we were there, and it having a negative health effect on anyone we encountered. To whatever extent it still exists in the Silver Valley, it seems like it would be far less expensive and much faster to have a regional group do the cleanup work and leave the EPA at the federal level out of it.

Answering VelvetSky's question, I found out it's the south fork of the Coeur d'Alene River that flows through Wallace. It's right along the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes and the long freeway overpasses. Maybe if there's a great deal of snowmelt it could flood, but there's quite a bit of distance between the river and most of the residences. I'd have to ask about this as well on our next visit, as the river looked pretty sedate and small during each of our visits.