Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, May 28, 2005 at 11:59AM :
In Reply to: Wallace, ID posted by Tom @ Snake River on Saturday, May 28, 2005 at 0:56AM :
I'll have to ask aroiund about that name. The big FBI raid was in 1988, when they shut down the gambling and prostitution. Most of the bars had gambling in a back room, including slot machines, and from what I can tell most of the buildings on Cedar Street were whorehouses. Lots of tiny "apartments" in the uptairs and basements of some of those buildings.
Amazing it ran wide open until '88. The mines were already hurting after the Hunt brothers' manipulation of the silver market, and then Gulf Industries bought the Bunker Hill in one of those junk bond deals, moved all the money out of the country and shut it down. Then the FBI raid killed the last remaining source of outside income. It was hard times in Kellogg and Wallace. The current mayor talks about bringing back gambling, but I don't see how the Mormons down south would ever go for it, and without the legislature's okay it'd just be back to the way it was before the raid. Besides, nowadays they'd probably just build a giant Indian-style casino on the edge of town.
As it is, though, "vice" is a pretty low priority in Shoshone County, so long as the people involved keep it quiet. From what the old-timers tell me, enforcement of the Volstead act was rare as well. The old mines in the forested hills made great locations for stills, and a short tunnel into a hillside right in town was used by the sheriff to store the bottles he was distributing. The tunnel wasn't to keep the liquor hidden from the law -- it was just to keep it from getting stolen. Everybody knew it was there.
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