This book focuses my great-grandparents, Matthew and Isabelle Campbell McFall, Scottish immigrants who met and married in Eureka, Nevada, a silver mining town in the 1870s.  They moved to Idaho’s Wood River Valley in 1881, when the discovery of silver began a major silver rush.  Isabelle’s Campbell relatives soon followed.  In 1881, Matt built a boarding house in Broadford, west of Bellevue, to serve the mines located in Galena Gulch.  In 1882, Matt built the International Hotel in Bellevue, which was “one of the best in [Idaho] Territory,” according to historian Clark Spence in For Wood River or Bust: Idaho’s Silver Boom of the 1880s.  Isabelle’s brother Neil Campbell operated Bellevue’s first blackmith shop; was the blacksmith-foreman at the Minnie Moore mine and built the mine’s headframe; operated a stagecoach line between Bellevue and the mining town of Muldoon; had the Valley’s first commercial apple orchard; and he and his sons owned farms and a number of silver mines.  Matt McFall and Neil Campbell served on Bellevue’s Town Council in the 1880s. 

Between 1882 – 1884, Union Pacific built its Northwest line from Wyoming, through Idaho to Portland, using a subsidiary, the Oregon Short Line Railroad (OSL).  In 1883,  the OSL built the Wood River Branch between Shoshone and Hailey, connecting the Valley to the outside world, resulting in an economic boom.  Outside capitalists invested in the valley’s mines, bringing an era of large-scale industrial mining.  In 1884, the branch was extended to serve the Philadelphia Smelter north of Ketchum at the head of Warm Springs Canyon.  Matt McFall was a successful businessman.  He and his friend Henry Miller, owner of the Minnie Moore Mine, built and operated the Bellevue Water Works (the town’s private water supply), and the Bellevue racetrack.

The International Silver Depression (1888 – 1898), said to be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, shut down mining in the Wood River Valley, with the Ketchum Keystone saying in 1893, “the Wood River Mining Region is deader than a lime fossil.”  The Valley’s mines and smelters closed, its residents left in droves, and mining towns were abandoned, including Bolton, Bullion, Gilman, Broadford, Gimlet, Doniphan, Hays and Muldoon.  Bellevue, Hailey, and Ketchum survived as centers of transportation and commerce, but their populations were reduced from their boom days.  Most of the country’s railroads went into bankruptcy, including the Union Pacific and Oregon Short Line.  The Wood River Branch was nearly shut down, but the next economic era kept it operating – sheep raising and agriculture.  In 1893, the McFalls moved to Shoshone, Idaho, then a thriving railroad town.  Shoshone was the “junction” between the Union Pacific Railroad’s Northwest line to Portland, and the Wood River Branch, and the center of Central Idaho’s growing agricultural industry.  

The International Silver Depression was ended by the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898, opening an era of great economic expansion.  Banker Henry Morgenthau said “the decade from 1896 to 1906…was the period of the most gigantic expansion of business in all American history.”  In 1897, E.H. Harriman headed a group that bought Union Pacific Railroad out of bankruptcy, and spent over $160 million rebuilding and expanding the line, building it into a major transportation giant and economic force.  The fortune he made allowed his son, Averell Harriman, to use the railroad to build Sun Valley in the Wood River Valley in 1936, as a way to restore passenger traffic that had been decimated by the Great Depression.  

Central Idaho benefitted greatly from the Reclamation Act of 1902, that provided funds to build dams and irrigation systems in the arid west, converting desert land into highly productive farms.  Local projects included the Snake River dams and irrigation projects developed by the Twin Falls Land and Water Company, and the new towns it developed (Twin Falls, Milner, Jerome, Buhl, Eden-Hazelton and others); and Magic Dam on the Big Wood River, the Richfield Canal, and the new towns developed on lands around Shoshone irrigated by the canal (Richfield, Gooding, Dietrich and others).  Farming historically brought many immigrants to Idaho, increasing its population from 88,000 in 1890 to 161,000 in 1900.  Reclamation Act projects significantly increased the number of immigrants coming to the state, doubling its population to 325,000 in 1910, and increasing it to 431,000 in 1920.

Shoshone became one of Idaho’s wealthiest towns in the early twentieth century because of the projects financed by the Reclamation Act and private capital, becoming known as the center of “The Best Dam County” in the country.  Union Pacific and the Oregon Short Line prospered, offering special rates to bring farmers to Idaho in immigrant cars, and transporting new agricultural products.  Branch lines were built all over Central Idaho to serve the newly developed agricultural towns that sprang up around Shoshone.

In 1900, Matt McFall built the McFall Hotel across from the railroad station (which still stands), that became the cultural and political center of  town.  Matt also owned the McFall Ranch between Shoshone and Gooding on the Little Wood River, was an early participant in area irrigation companies, and his farm was used as a model when newly irrigated farmland around Shoshone was sold.  Neil Campbell’s son Stewart and Matt McFall’s son John graduated from the Idaho School of Mines in 1905 and 1906, and became mining engineers, taking advantage of the reopening of Idaho’s mining industry.

In the teens, John McFall served on Shoshone’s town council, and John W. Lundin, Sr. (who married Matt’s daughter Alberta McFall) was Lincoln County Auditor. My father, John W. Lundin, Jr., was born and raised in Shoshone.  Many famous people stayed at the McFall Hotel, including Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and members of the Hole in the Wall gang; several presidents; and Ernest Hemingway, who was known to stop for a drink at the McFall Hotel bar before completing his trip to Sun Valley.  My grandmother was 10 years old and lived in the McFall Hotel when Butch and Sundance stayed there in September 1900, and likely ran into them in the lobby.  

The Campbell branch of the family stayed in Bellevue, taking advantage of the growing economy in the early 1900s.  The year 1900, “witnessed greater activity in the development of Idaho’s mineral resources than any other in its history,” according to the Report of Idaho’s Mining inspector.  Neil and his sons bought and sold at least 25 properties between 1895-1912, including platted lots in Bellevue and Hailey, agricultural land in the County, and mining claims.  They acquired at least 23 mines or mining claims from 1899 until the 1920s, in the Mineral Hill Mining District in the Big Wood River Valley, the Little Wood River Mining District near the mining town of Muldoon, and the Little Smokey Mining District outside of Fairfield.  The Campbell family owned at least 41 mines over the years.  They also acquired extensive farmland in the Big and Little Wood Valleys, including a multi-thousand acre ranch in the Little Wood Basin near the later constructed Little Wood Reservoir, where they built Campbell dam and reservoir to irrigate their land.  The area is still known as “Campbell Flats,” and is part of Flat Top Ranch.  Neil also owned a 460 acre farm in Muldoon Canyon east of Bellevue, extending from the present Ee-da-ho Ranch to the Bellevue cemetery, and south down Gannett Road approximately 3/4 of a mile along the east side of the Oregon Short Line roadbed.  Neil continued to operate his blacksmith shop and livery stable, and managed the International Hotel for Matt McFall, until it burned down on October 15, 1909, in a spectacular fire that almost destroyed much of Bellevue.  

Idaho and the Wood River Valley thrived during the teens and WWI, as war-time demand for its minerals (lead) and agricultural products (especially wool) caused prices to soar.  The McFall Hotel was expanded in 1910, and remodeled in 1914.  In 1914, the McFall Hotel, the Hiawatha Hotel in Hailey, and the Guyer Hot Springs Resort located outside of Ketchum (where a new $25,000 hotel had been built), offered package vacations that included motor tours of Stanley Basin and the “Stanley National Park,” even though no such park existed.  In the late teens and early 1920s, Matt and Isabelle McFall spent summers managing the Guyer Hot Springs Resort.  My father and brother and their cousins joined them, playing on the hill that later became the Warm Springs run at Sun Valley.

Idaho was hit by an agricultural depression in the 1920s, as the inflated prices for Idaho’s commodities dropped after the war ended. “The Roaring Twenties hit Idaho with a dull thud,” said an Idaho historian.  Many people left Idaho in the 1920s because of the hard times, including members of the author’s family – my grandparents moved to Portland seeking a better life.  Neil Campbell’s sons became involved in politics.  George Campbell was Blaine County sheriff in the 1920s and 1930s.  Stewart Campbell served as Idaho’s elected Inspector of Mines from 1920 to 1932, an important post in those days.  Stewart made a number of significant changes in the way the office did business, and enhanced its power and prestige.  In anticipation of the arrival of a new era, Neil made plans to convert his blacksmith shop in Bellevue to a gas station in 1925.  

The Campbells acquired 10 mines or  mining claims in Galena Gulch west of Bellevue, including four extensions of the Queen of the Hills mine.  When Stewart Campbell was Idaho’s Inspector of Mines and forbidden to engage in mining activity, he acquired the historic Queen of the Hills mine in Galena Gulch and the Silver Star Mine in the Little Smoky Mining District over Dollarhide Summit.  Stewart formed the Silver Star – Queen Company, using third parties as proxies to hide his involvement, to develop the mines.   Work on the Queen continued off and on in the 1930s. The company sought investment capital from the public in 1935, using a Prospectus labeled, DEPRESSION PROOF.  The Company was working with Irwin Rockwell, owner of the Minnie Moore Mine to locate a rich vein of silver, which after the mine produced $10 million of ore, was lost below a fault. Work continued until the 1970s, although the Campbell family lost control of the company after WWII, but remained shareholders in the company.

 The Wood River Valley’s mining industry faced difficult times after WWI, although sheep raising thrived.  In the 1920s, Ketchum and Hill City on Camas Prairie shipped more sheep than anywhere in the world, except for sheep stations in Australia.  This kept the Wood River branch of the Oregon Short Line Railroad in operation, making it possible for Averell Harriman and the Union Pacific Railroad to build the Sun Valley Ski Resort in 1936.  When Harriman sent Count Felix Schaffgotsch to tour the west in late 1935, to find the ideal location for a new ski resort, it had to be on an existing Union Pacific rail line.

Neil Campbell died in 1925, and Matt McFall in 1930.  The Shoshone newspaper said Matt McFall, Pioneer Hotel Man, “Checks Out,”  noting he was “one of the genuine pioneers of the Wood River Valley.”  There is a Campbell section in the Bellevue cemetery and a McFall section in the Shoshone cemetery.  The family sold the McFall Ranch in 1939, and the McFall Hotel in 1945, after which the last of the McFall family moved out of Idaho.  Some Campbell relatives stayed in the Wood River Valley, where several worked in the area’s mines.

This book explores several themes.  First, the journey of immigrants seeking to make their own destiny and determine their own future by hard work and individual effort.  Second, how Idaho’s mountain towns were not isolated, but were linked to the outside world and dominated by cycles of economic boom and bust, where individual efforts were trumped by national and international economic trends. 

My Idaho relatives lived in two periods of American history: first, where individuals believed they could create their future from their own labor and initiative without help from others; and second, where life was dominated by large investments made by corporations, the government and international economic trends. Their generation claimed they made their own way based on individual effort and self-reliance, but their success depended on numerous government programs that subsidized settlement of the West.  These include financing the transcontinental railroad under the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862; the Homestead Act of 1862, that provided free land in exchange for living on and improving it; the Mining Act of 1872, permitting access to minerals on federal land; the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, requiring the Treasury to buy silver and put it into circulation as silver dollars, which spurred silver mining in the West; the Desert Land Act of 1894, which provided land in the arid west and money for irrigation projects; and the Reclamation Act of 1902, providing federal financing for dams and water systems which led to the irrigation of millions of acres of dry land, and brought hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the West.  

Bernard DeVoto described western attitudes about the federal government as, “Get out and give us more money.” Wallace Stegner said, “Westerners who would like to return to the old days of free grab, people of the kind described as having made America great by their initiative and energy in committing mass trespass on the minerals, grass, timber and water of the Public Domain, complain that no Western state is master in its own house.” A 2008 New York Times article about the West said, “The inhabitants boasted of their autonomy, even as the government did the dirty work, took the risks and offered sweet deals to settlers, so they could expand the borders of the United States. Without this help…the waves of Western pioneers wouldn’t have the luxury of hating Washington bureaucrats.”

The politics of Idaho still reflect these attitudes.