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Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in Shoshone County, Idaho.
Official Website
The county was established in 1864, named for the Native American Shoshone tribe.
Shoshone County is commonly referred to as the Silver Valley, due to its century-old mining history. The Silver Valley is famous nationwide for the vast amounts of silver, lead, and zinc mined from it.
Hard rock miners in Shoshone County protested wage cuts with a strike in 1892. After several lost their lives in a shooting war provoked by discovery of a company spy, the U.S. army forced an end to the strike. Hostilities erupted once again in 1899 when, in response to the company firing seventeen men for joining the union, the miners dynamited the Bunker Hill & Sullivan mill. Again, lives were lost, and the U.S. Army intervened, requested by Governor Frank Steunenberg, as the Idaho National Guard troops were still stationed in the Philippines following the Spanish–American War. Steunenberg was assassinated outside his residence in Caldwell in 1905, nearly five years after leaving office, and the subsequent trials in Boise in 1907 made national headlines.
Much of the county was burned in the Great Fire of 1910, including part of the town of Wallace.
Adjacent Counties
- Bonner County
- Sanders County, Montana
- Mineral County, Montana
- Clearwater County
- Latah County
- Benewah County
- Kootenai County
Cities & Communities
- Adair
- Avery
- Big Creek
- Burke
- Calder
- Cataldo
- Clarkia
- Enaville
- Gold Creek
- Hoyt
- Kellogg (County Seat)
- Kingston
- Mullan
- Murray
- Osburn
- Pinehurst
- Silverton
- Smelterville
- Wallace
- Wardner
Links
Clearwater National Forest (part)
Coeur d'Alene Nat'l Forest (part)
St. Joe Nat'l Forest (part)