- [FUNDER ANNOUNCER] Major funding for Idaho Experience provided by the J.A.

and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation making Idaho a place to learn, thrive and prosper.

With additional support from Anne Voilleque and Lousie Nelson, and Judy and Steve Meyer, the Friends of Idaho Public Television.

the Idaho Public Television Endowment, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

[STEAM SOUND] [MUSIC] [TRAIN RUMBLES] - [ANNOUNCER] You can't overstate the role railroads played in building Idaho and the American West.

-HELEN RIGBY] When the railroad it was pretty significant.

It changed the economy.

it changed the way people lived.

- [ANNOUNCER] But the mining wars of 1892 threatened to derail things in North Idaho's Silver Valley.

- [VICKI ALLMAN] And those wars had killed people.

I mean, it was really a war.

- [SHAUNA HILLMAN] Mining history, railroad history and the history of Wallace reads like a dime novel, murder, mayhem, mining, money, men and prostitution.

- [ANNOUNCER] The rules of the road were being written on the fly.

No expense was too great or ego too large, as America's railroad giants battled it out over control of Idaho's transportation corridors.

- [JOHN W. LUNDIN] James J. Hill and E.H. Harriman hated each other.

- [THORNTON WAITE] And they were ruthless in everything they did.

- [ANNOUNCER] But when profits were on the line, they found room for compromise.

The Camas Prairie Railroad became a towering model of cooperation.

Northern Pacific and Union Pacific set their differences aside to jointly operate the railroad on stilts.

Not to be outdone, the Milwaukee Road tunneled and built its way through the rugged Bitterroot Mountains to claim bragging rights as the fastest route between Chicago and Seattle.

Dusty wagon trails gave way to sophisticated railroad grades.

But modernization didn't come easy.

- [NANCY FOSTER-RENK] The problem was there was a shortage of, of good workers.

- [ANNOUNCER] So, labor contractors looked to immigrants to fill the void.

But Asian railroad workers across the West were often treated unfairly.

- [SAM HUI] The history of the Chinese, from what I understand, they got paid approximately 20% of the Anglo workers.

- [ANNOUNCER] There are efforts being made to keep their memories alive.

But their contributions remain largely overlooked.

[HOPEFUL MUSIC] Without a doubt, Idaho's railroad history is complex.

From the first steam trains rumbling across the Idaho Territory and the electric locomotives that would follow, to building the Oregon Short Line and the nation's first destination ski resort, rail lines opened up Idaho to the world.

It's an intriguing narrative that sparks the imagination by simply opening a photo album, paying a visit to a depot turned museum, or by just watching a train pass by.

All in all, it's a storyline forged along the tracks of time.

[ANNOUNCER] The tracks are long gone, and Mother Nature has been left to her devices.

The Utah Northern Railroad was t first train line to enter Idaho in the 1870█s.

- [THORNTON WAITE] It was a narrow gauge, line three foot wide instead of the standard four feet, eight and a half inches that you see today.

In the 1870s someone said an oxcart was faster than the first trains.

- [ANNOUNCER] Thornton Waite is an ardent student of railroad history.

He's also one of Idaho's foremost railroad experts.

He's written a dozen history books and countless magazine articles on the topic.

He says the Mormon Church built the Utah Northern to link the Cache Valley's LDS settlements together, and even considered extending the line into Montana.

- [WAITE] The Butte mines had a lot of silver and gold.

And shortly after that electricity increased the demand for copper and the Butte mines were rich in copper.

- [ANNOUNCER] Utah Northern construction began in 1871 out of Brigham City, Utah using mostly Mormon volunteers.

The line reached Franklin, Idaho in 1874.

The Cache Valley was isolated at the time, and the economy in its infancy.

- [HELEN RIGBY] The early settlers, bartered.

They produced what they needed and if they didn't produce it, they went without.

[ANNOUNCER] Helen Rigby also has a strong interest in railroad history.

[HELEN RIGBY, CACHE VALLEY RESIDENT] I love being in the library looking through old books or on the internet.

You know, I can chase something down a rabbit hole for hours.

- [ANNOUNCER] Helen feels the Utah Northern's entry into the Cache Valley was a watershed moment.

[RIGBY] Absolutely.

It just totally changed the economy, it changed the way people lived.

[MUSIC] The railroad into Cache Valley was really significant.

[MUSIC] - [ANNOUNCER] The Utah Northern was led by John Willard Young, the son of Mormon leader Brigham Young.

He brought in East Coast investors and a court settlement ordered Union Pacific to provide the Church with rails and rolling stock.

- [RIGBY] They had contracted with the railroads when they were building transcontinental railroad to supply ties and didn't get paid for them.

[TENSE MUSIC] [NERVOUS CROWD] - [ANNOUNCER] The Financial Crisis of 1873 hit the railroad industry hard, spelling doom for the Utah Northern.

- [RIGBY] The eastern people pulled their money out or wanted their money back, and Utah Northern eventually went bankrupt.

[MUSIC] - [ANNOUNCER] Financier Jay Gould worked with Union Paci to purchase the Utah Northern out of bankruptcy in 1878.

It was rebranded as the Utah and Northern Railway It linked up with the Oregon Sho in Pocatello, and the lines eventually merged.

- [MUSIC] - [WAITE] The Oregon Short Line was built through Southern Idaho in the early 1880s to reach the West Coast.

The railroad wanted to compete with the Northern Pacific which had just been built across Northern Idaho.

- [ANNOUNCER] The Oregon Short Line ran from Granger, Wyoming to Huntington, Oregon, bypassing Boise because the grade into Boise was too steep.

Union Pacific's main line wouldn connect to Boise until 1925, the same year the historic Boise Depot was built.

[MUSIC] [GEISER SOUND] [ANNOUCER] The railraods viewed America's National Parks with great interest.

In fact, they played a major role in establishment of the National Park system.

[MUSIC] Northern Pacific was the first railroad to reach Yellowstone, and they promoted it heavily.

- [WAITE] Northern Pacific built a line to Gardiner at the turn of the century and it was very profitable because tourists wanted to go to the park and they could ride the train directly to the park boundary.

Union Pacific saw this and said they wanted the passenger business.

- [ANNOUNCER] So they built a line to West Yellowstone and it quickly became the most popular way to get to the park.

- [WAITE] The Yellowstone depot was a fascinating place.

If you look at the pictures, people had these huge trunks that they traveled with, and it's just interesting to see.

[UPBEAT MUSIC] [WAITE] The line to West Yellowstone was really unusual because the railroad never made any attempt to keep it open in the winter months.

The railroad would mount a spring campaign.

They had a special train with a rotary plow on the front and they'd have a second behind it with the crew and support facilities.

The schools would let out and it would be a big party because they knew the winter was over and that they'd made it for another summer.

[TRAIN RUMBLES] [BELL RINGS] - [ANNOUNCER] The years surrounding the turn of the 20th century were big for railroad expansion.

[JOHN W. LUNDIN, AUTHOR/HISTORIAN] And there's a huge amount of competition in the early 1900s between Union Pacific and Northern Pacific and Great Northern to fill in all those unserved areas in the West.

- [ANNOUNCER] The Shoshone area in South Central Idaho became Union Pacific territory.

- [LUNDIN] Shoshone was developed as a railroad town.

When you see it now, it kind of is a town that time forgotten.

But in the 1880s through the early part of the 1900s it was probably the most important railroad town in the state of Idaho.

- [MUSIC] - [ANNOUNCER] John W. Lundin's great grandparents viewed the railroad as a business opportunity.

So they built the McFall Hotel across the road from the tracks.

[LUNDIN] The McFall Hotel became the primary railroad hotel and the political, economic and cultural center of Shoshone.

- [ANNOUNCER] And when the National Reclamation Act of 1902 became law, federal funds helped settlers transform Idaho's arid landscape into productive farmland.

- [LUNDIN] All the Reclamation Act dams and irrigation systems along the Snake River were a product of that.

The Twin Falls development area was a product of that.

All the construction material and people to build all those dams came through Shoshone.

And the Oregon Short Line helped convert the state of Idaho into one of t major agricultural producing states in the country.

[MUSIC] [LUNDIN] The story of Union Pacific in Idaho can't be told without learning something about Robert Strahorn and his wife Carrie Adell Strahorn.

He was a publicist for Union Pacific and she wrote articles for women's magazines to convince the women of the East Coast and the Midwest that there was a place for them in Idaho.

- [ANNOUNCER] Strahorn not only made money from writing books and articles for UP, he also profited off the railroad as a town builder.

- [LUNDIN] He knew where the tracks were gonna go and he knew where the rail stops were planned.

So in 1882 he and several other Union Pacific insiders formed a company called The Idaho and Oregon Improvement Company Improvement Company.

And it was designed basically to trade on what we now call inside information.

to aquire large tracks of land i that was basically worthless des - [ANNOUNCER] The group convince build a branch line from Shoshon to Hailey to access the Wood River Valley█ silver industry.

But the Philadephia Smelter█s in wanted it built past Ketchum.

- [LUNDIN] In 1884 the Wood River tracks were extended north of Ketchum directly into the Philadelphia Smelter.

And that gave Ketchum an advantage in the battle to be the industrial center of the valley.

- [ANNOUNCER] Union Pacific and the Oregon Short Line went bankrupt in 1893 when the price of silver collapsed.

But the Wood River Valley Line survived thanks to Idaho's growing sheep industry.

E.H. Harriman rebuilt UP by the early 20th Century.

His son Averell would follow in footsteps.

Averell worked his way up to bec Chairman of the Board.

He also developed an idea that w change the Wood River Valley for - [LUNDIN] Averell Harriman decided in 1936 to build Sun Valley as a way to regenerate passenger travel for Union Pacific that had been destroyed by the Great Depression.

However, it had to be located on an existing Union Pacific branch.

He brought in an Austrian acquaintance named Count Felix Schaffgotsch.

- [ANNOUNCER] After being taken to several locations in th he was brought to Ketchum.

[LUNDIN] The Count telegrammed H "This is the place."

Harriman came two days later or a few days later, fell in love with the place and immediately started building his dream resort in the wilds of Idaho.

- [ANNOUNCER] And so Sun Valley became America's first destination ski resort.

and would go on to attract celebrities from across the coun and around the world.

- [LUNDIN] And virtually all of them came by train and stopped here in Shoshone and waited in this very bar where we're sitting.

Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman.

Ernest Hemingway was famous for stopping in here.

Shoshone and the McFall Hotel were part of that whole wonderful culture that developed in the 1930s.

[UPBEAT MUSIC ] - [ANNOUNCER] The small town of Wallace, Idaho lies in the heart of north Idaho's Silver Valley This historic mining community, as well as the neaby town of Bur have quite a few stories to tell Northern Pacific was the first railroad to come Wallace in the early 188 during the beginning of nnorth Idaho's mining boom.

- [JOHN V. WOOD] The original discovery of minerals in the Silver Valley was gold, and that was on the north fork of the Coeur d'Alene River about 1883.

The first railroad that went up the Canyon to Burke, what became Burke, was the narrow-gauge Coeur d'Alene Railway and Navigation Company.

And then the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company was a standard gauge railroad that also went up to Burke.

- [ANNOUNCER] The railroads hauled massive amounts of ore out of Burke and the other mining communities located in the narrow Burke Canyon.

During the peak of mining operations more than 5,000 people lived here.

But by the middle of the 20th century things had slowed.

Mines began shutting down and people left.

The last mine in Burke closed in 1991.

- [WOOD] It's a ghost town now.

There's next to nothing left there.

There's a little bit of the Hecla Mill.

But there█s not much else.

- [ANNOUNCER] Vicki Allmann and Shauna Hillman are literally institutions around Wallace.

Shauna ran the Northern Pacific Railroad Depot Museum fo And Vicki is known for her keen portrayal of historic figure May Arkwright Hutton.

Hearing them talk about the conflicts between union miners and mine owners during the late 1800s is fascinating.

In 1892 we had the beginning of the labor wars.

Miners were expendable.

- [VICKI ALLMANN, WALLACE RESIDENT] And those wars killed people.

I mean, it was a real war.

What the mine owners did is they wanted to reduce the wages of the miners.

Now, remember, this is a dirty, tough, dangerous job.

- [HILLMAN] The miners wanted $3.50 a day, and the mine owners were accused of paying the laborers so little so they could pay their shareholders more.

And it didn't go well.

[SHAUNA HILLMAN, WALLACE RESIDENT] So, they blew up the mill in Frisco because, I guess you don't make miners mad when they have access to dynamite.

[EXPLOSION] - [ALLMANN] A fella up at the very top sent down 5,000 pounds of powder, and when it hit the mill it exploded.

The mill turned into a big pile of boards and dirt, and out came the scabs.

They're running like crazy from the explosion.

And they were picked off one by one from those miners.

And it was over 50 cents.

And I will tell you, Governor Steunenberg, who was the governor of Idaho at that time was so flooded with mine owner horror that he declared martial law.

That set up the whole issue of what happened in 1899 when the group of miners figuring they got away with it at the Frisco decided they would blow up the Bunker Hill.

And so they did.

- [HILLMANN] They hijacked a train in Burke.

The engineer was L.W.

Hutton, and put a gun to his ribs and said take this train down the tracks.

And they picked up more men, more guns, more dynamite at every little town coming down Canyon Creek.

[ALLMANN] They were waiting with their bandanas on and their bottle of hooch in this hand and they were whooping and they were gonna go blow up the Bunker Hill 'cause the Bunker Hill refused to unionize.

[EXPLOSION] [HILLMAN] He powers on down to Kellogg and they blow up the mill again.

And, who knows, maybe Bunker Hill was looking to get a new mill and they upped their insurance.

Anything's possible in a mining camp.

You never know.

- [ANNOUNCER] Around a thousand miners were thrown into a prison compound the called the Bullpen.

Then the unthinkable happened.

- [HILLMAN] Northern Pacific Railway fired Mr. Hutton because they didn't resist the hijack enough.

They had a gun.

[LAUGH] - [ANNOUNCER] The Milwaukee Road was the nation's sixth and final transcontinental railroad, In the early 1900's, the company building it's Pacific extension through Idaho's panhandle.

♪ All aboard, all aboard, ♪ On the Old Milwaukee Road - [HILLMAN] Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific, or the Milwaukee Road as we call it today to shorten it.

Amazing Railroad company.

- [ANNOUNCER] The Milwaukee Road was backed by Rockefeller money and its goal was to strip the Great Northern of its bragging rights as the fastest route between Chicago and Seattle.

- [HILLMAN] That created some havoc with J.J. Hill on the Great Northern.

He didn't want the little Milwaukee Road to beat his railroad to Chicago.

- [ANNOUNCER] And yet it did, by carving its way through the St. Paul Pass in the rugged Bitterroot Mountains.

The Pacific extension's price tag came in at a whopping $75,000 per mile, far more expensive than the other transcontinentals.

- [ANNOUNCER] The Milwaukee Road was innovative.

It electrified the Pacific extension by 1916, and Avery, Idaho was the division point.

Crews switched out steam, and later diesel locomotives, for electrics before the trains headed off into the mountains.

And they switched them back when the trains returned.

Rick Marshall's family witnessed it all.

- [RICK MARSHALL] My great grandparents moved here as railroaders.

My mother was born here.

My brother was a night cook here in the Beanery.

I got started in the railroad a little late as far as trying to make a career out of it.

[ANNOUNCER] Avery was the little railroad town that could.

running 24 hours a day, seven da So Rick and others question why the Milwaukee Road pulled the plug on the Pacific Extension in 1980.

- [MARSHALL] They'd been trying to shut it down, trying to bankrupt it since the 50s, and they finally did it.

You stop and think about that electric railroad, the shortest line between Chicago and Tacoma, a day and a half they could get there, a day and a half sooner than any other railroad.

Just think how that would fit into today's economics.

There's no way the government would have let them shut that railroad down today.

Not in a million years.

[ANNOUNCER] Another north Idaho has become one of the state█s most beloved.

Known as the railroad on stilts, The Camas Prairie Railroad opened in 1908, and operated for - [NANCY FOSTER-RENK, HISTORIAN] Railroad fans around the world know this railroad for its, particularly the second subdivision, which is the one that goes from the Clearwater River basically up to Grangeville.

- [ANNOUNCER] The railroad's second subdivision was built with seven tunnels and nearly four dozen wooden trestles, including the famous Half Moon Trestle.

Then there's the massive steel viaduct that stretches across Lawyer's Canyon.

- [FOSTER-RENK] The Northern Pacific and Union Pacific had been fighting each other to try to get into that area in the late 1800s.

Because this was a huge agricult and timber area, - [ANNOUNCER] But there wasn't enough revenue potential to support two separate lines.

So, they decided to share power and operate the railroad together.

[FOSTER-RENK] Camas Prairie Rail took it over in 1998, and the second subdivision was just not profitable because of the high maintenance cost of those trestles.

- [ANNOUNCER] So, it was shut down in 2000.

But, without a doubt, it remains as one of the most incredible stretches of railroad ever built in America.

The work immigrants performed on railroads in Idaho and across the American West was impressive And Chinese men were often assig the most dangerous jobs.

and payed far less than anglo wo Several Chinese were buried here just outside of Bliss, Idaho after they were killed in a tragic dynamite accident.

[JIM LANCE] Here's the graves that I was telling you about and... - [ANNOUNCER] Jim Lance passed by this graveyard hundreds of times when he worked for Union Pacific.

He brought his friend Sam Hui here.

Sam's family immigrated to Idaho from Hong Kong in 1972.

[SAM HUI, BOISE RESIDENT] - These are my people that traveled 7,000 miles to work on these railroads and they're just buried in this non-descript graveyard.

The historical significance of this is just, just unbelievable, Jim.

- [ANNOUNCER] That same day Sam and Jim returned to the spot where they, along with members of Idaho's Chinese community and others placed this memorial in King Hill.

[JIM LANCE] I knew what the history of the Chinese and how they were treated in this country.

And with The Chinese Exclusion Act, and how they were used and labored on the railroad, and not much credit was given to them.

- [HUI] It touches my heart, because it could be somebody from my parent's village in Taishan, Guangdong Province, Southern China.

And here we are, in King Hill, Idaho.

That's where this monument stands.

That's pretty cool.

- [ANNOUNCER] It's also a fitting reminder of how the noble efforts of a few can help rekindle memories nearly lost along the tracks of time.

♪ Freight train freight train running so fast ♪ ♪ Freight train freight train running so fast ♪ ♪ Please don't tell what train I'm on ♪ ♪ They won't know what route I'm on ♪ ♪ When I'm dead and in my grave ♪ ♪ No more good times here I crave ♪ ♪ Place the stones at my head and feet ♪ ♪ Tell them all I've gone to sleep ♪ [MELLOW GUITAR MUSIC] - [FUNDER ANNOUNCER] Major funding for Idaho Experience provided by the J.A.

and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation making Idaho a place to learn, thrive and prosper.

With additional support from Anne Voilleque and Lousie Nelson, and Judy and Steve Meyer, the Friends of Idaho Public Television.

the Idaho Public Television Endowment, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.