Hiking into a History of Heroism

It's a hike I always wanted to make. I'd driven by it many times. I reported on it back in my TV days. But to be there in person where it happened more than a century earlier was a little surreal.

To most people, Wallace is just a dot on the map in the Idaho Panhandle. Drivers just blow right by it, or should I say over it, on Interstate 90. For trivia buffs, Wallace was the final town along I-90 that still had a traffic light. Given the town's history, locals did not want progress in the form of a new, wider interstate to wipe out any of its structures so it successfully filed to have the entire town declared an historic site. As a result, I-90 is  now elevated on cement pylons with all the buildings below and around it permanently preserved. But, that's not the history I referred to.

Lori and I, along with our monthly-dinner double-date-friends Doug and Shellie, planned an overnighter to Wallace to enjoy the town's vibe and eventually hike the Pulaski Tunnel Trail. More on the trail in a moment.

We arrived in Wallace, about a 100-mile drive from home, in the early afternoon where we wandered along Bank Street, home to fun businesses and eateries. My favorite stopping spot is the North Idaho Trading Co., known as the "Weirdest Little Shop in the Northwest. After a lot of looking online and other places, it's where we bought our son a sweet jackalope mount several years earlier. I also got a throwback Boston Celtics jacket for my brother a couple of years before that. It's such a strange, cool place featuring more than 150 pieces of taxidermy, jewelry, firearms, knives, throwback toys, collectibles and oddities like a six-foot mummified mermaid skeleton. (I know, right?)

He said: For dinner, we wandered into the Fainting Goat Restaurant and Bar - casual dining in a most casual setting and with a full menu of appetizers, soups/salads, pasta, pizzas, sandwiches and desserts. I ordered bison sliders, fries and dipping sauce. I've always liked bison because of its flavor and its lean but nutritional nature. This meal delivered as well. 

One item on the dessert menu jumped out at me so I had to order it: lemoncillo sorbet. Ever since I served as a missionary in southern Italy in the early 1980s and then returned there in 2023, I've been a lemon gelato connoisseur constantly in search of an American equivalent. Was this sorbet comparable to the real Italian deal? No. But it was tasty and yes, I would order it again.

One place Lori and I had not previously visited in Wallace, but I always wanted to, was the Sixth Street Melodrama and Theater. We checked that box on this evening as the four of us had tickets for "Huckleberry Havoc or...the Villian is in a Jam." The melodrama told the story of Miss Sarah Sweet, who was trying to find the missing huckleberry pie recipe that was taken from her dead father. Sarah met hero Stanley Steadfast, villain Malcot Malicous and saloon owner Lucrecia Luscious in her quest to find the missing recipe. It was a cute show. While the theater is more than four decades old, the building itself is the only wooden building in town that survived by a fire that swept through Wallace in the 1890s.

We spent the night in a shared room at the Brooks Hotel. That was by design because we ate breakfast downstairs at Brooks Hotel Restaurant the following morning. You've just got to love a restaurant that serves breakfast all day! And why not? It has about four dozen different choices. 

He said: I was overwhelmed by it all but ended up ordering the massive huckleberry-pecan cinnamon roll (minus the candied pecans) with huckleberry butter. Imagine one of those large breakfast dishes that's almost all covered by a giant cinnamon roll. Man oh may! This thing was heavy, mouthwatering, succulent and scrumptious. 

Before...

...after

After breakfast, it was on to the main event. When I was an anchor/reporter, I did a series of stories on the 100th anniversary of the Big Burn, a 1910 wildfire recognized as the largest forest fire in American history that burned more than three million acres of forestland in Idaho and Montana. Gale force winds stoked a fire that destroyed several small towns including about a third of Wallace and killed nearly 100 people, mostly firefighters.   

The most well-known or famous was Ed Pulaski, a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service. As the story goes, Pulaski had charge of 44 men fighting the fire. As flames were about to overtake them, he lead his team to an abandoned prospect mine just above Wallace. They jammed into the small cave along with a horse. Knowing there was no chance of survival if any man tried to leave, Pulaski drew his pistol and threatened to shoot any who tried to do so. In the end, all but five of the men survived. Pulaski himself suffered major, life-long injuries from the fire. To this day, he is celebrated as a hero for saving lives in the line of duty. The cave is known as the Pulaski Tunnel in his honor and the Pulaski Tunnel Trail takes hikers directly to it. (To this day, the Pulaski axe-hoe tool is utilized by firefighters.) The tunnel entrance was restored in 2010.

Though described as "moderately difficult" by several online sources, I'd say the four-mile round trip hike is actually pretty easy. None of the four of us had any issues. It's a short one-mile drive south of Wallace. The trail gains about 800 feet in elevation and follows part of the route the Pulaski crew took along West Fork of Placer Creek. The entire trek is loaded with lush, thick vegetation below with spruce and fir stands along the way. I'd also suggest you plan on spending several hours for this outing so you can stop, read, soak in history and learn from all the interpretive signs.  

Having built up healthy appetites from hiking, we pulled into St. Regis, Montana, for dinner at Winki's Diner, a favorite stop for us (and one we previously featured), for a huckleberry shake, burger and fries. While there, we noticed a merchant set up in the grass field out back selling wares from Texas. I scored a couple of metal creations to take with me - a large robin and a metallic pig "bird house."