Railroads

Of all the buildings in Wallace, the one travelers remember best may be the one built for travelers. The Northern Pacific Depot, with its brick first story, its stuccoed second story, and its storybook turret, has stood at the north end of Sixth Street since the first years of the twentieth century, and for most of that time, it was Wallace's front door.

Fifteen miles east of Wallace, a gravel trail slips into a tunnel nearly two miles long, crosses steel trestles high above mountain creeks, and descends a canyon wall through the Bitterroot Mountains. The Route of the Hiawatha rail-trail follows the most expensive and difficult stretch of railroad ever built in the Northwest — the Milwaukee Road's crossing of St. Paul Pass — and every mile of it is steeped in the history of the men who built it.