- [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.

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

- [ERIKS GARSVO] The railroad not only was the internet, the freeway of the day, the railroad brought civilization to the wild west.

It tamed the west in a way.

- [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.

The iron horse became synonymous with the iron fist.

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

- [GUY BURNHAM] They were serious competitors.

[LAUGHS] - [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.

- [DAVID ASLESON] Just think of the manpower and the horsepower that it took to go through bare rock.

- [SANDA PICCININI] Oh my gosh, yes.

To have accomplished what they did is unbelievable.

- [ANNOUNCER] 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 good workers.

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

Many immigrants came to Pocatello and settled in the Triangle.

- [SOPHIE MC CURRY] So It was a melting pot neighborhood, actually.

- [JIM LANCE] You had the French were on certain blocks, and the Greeks.

And then you had the Italians, and then you had the African American communities.

There was a few Japanese there and I'm told there was Chinese there too.

- [JULIE VANCE] 'Cause economic situation in Japan was just desperate at the time.

- [ANNOUNCER] But both Japanese and Chinese railroad workers across the west were 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 to 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, becoming a model railroad enthusiast, or by just watching a train pass by.

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

[ANNOUNCER] Many of the original tracks are gone, leaving mother nature to her devices.

Remnants of railroads like the Utah Northern Railroad, the first train line to enter Idaho are hard to find these days.

- [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.

Very low budget, so to speak.

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.

You need copper wiring for telegraph, [THORNTON WAITE, AUTHOR/HISTORIAN] eventually the telephone and for power in all the cities and towns.

- [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.

They actually had- - [ANNOUNCER] Helen Rigby also has a strong interest in railroad history.

- [RIGBY] I'm just a nerd who likes to research [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.

The railroad into Cache Valley was really significant.

- [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.

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

It was rebranded as the Utah and Northern Railway and made a UP subsidiary.

Construction resumed and UP build maintenance shops in Eagle Rock, what is now Idaho Falls.

The shops ultimately moved to Pocatello and the Utah and Northern eventually became part of the Oregon Short Line.

- [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.

UP's main line wouldn't connect to Boise until 1925, the same year the historic Boise Depot was built.

The Oregon Short line was a standard gauge line so the Utah Northern's narrow gauge rails were problematic.

- [RIGBY] The game is to get your goods to market as quickly as you can and if you have something loaded on a narrow gauge, you can't just hook it to an engine on standard gauge and move it on.

- [ANNOUNCER] Yellowstone was named America's first National Park in 1872 and it remains wildly popular today.

America's railroad companies were interested in the National Parks from the beginning, and they played a major role in establishment of the National Park system.

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.

And 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.

- This was a time when big plans were being made.

[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] And 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.

- [ANNOUNCER] John W. Lundin's great grandparents saw the railroad as a real opportunity so, they built the McFall Hotel across the road from the tracks.

- [TOUR GUIDE] And there's rooms- - [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 from one dependent economically on natural resources into one of the major agricultural producing states in the country.

[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 magazine 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 and it was designed basically to trade on what we now call insider information.

- [ANNOUNCER] They convinced UP to build a branch line from Shoshone to Hailey to access the Wood River Valley's silver industry.

But the Philadelphia Smelter's investors 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 began working for UP in his early 20s.

He'd go on to become Chairman of the Board, bring the Pacific Streamliner to market and develop an idea that changed the Wood River Valley forever.

- [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 he was brought to Ketchum.

- The Count immediately fell in love with it, telegrammed Harriman, "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] Sun Valley became America's first destination ski resort.

[UPBEAT MUSIC] [MUSIC CHANGES] - [UNION PACIFIC ANNOUNCER] Skiing at its best.

One of the many reasons why Sun Valley has become America's winter wonderland, a mountain mecca for the nation's sports enthusiasts.

The spacious Sun Valley Lodge and Pony Challenger Inn are two swell places to live.

Snuggled together in a large valley sheltered by mountain ranges, they form the center of a modern community in the snow clad hills of South Central Idaho.

In close proximity are the ski shops, drug store and motion picture theater and general store.

They supply all conveniences found in a modern neighborhood.

Dry, silvery snow, crisp clean air and sparkling sunshine conspire to create an ideal climate.

And, talk about fun.

Well, you'll soon see for yourself.

Nothing but the positive assurance of exceptional sport on skis could have brought these happy snowbirds to Sun Valley.

They're about to board a- - [ANNOUNCER] Sun Valley attracted celebrities from across the country 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.

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

[UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC ] [UPBEAT FOLK ROCK MUSIC] - [ANNOUNCER] The small town of Wallace, Idaho is located in the heart of Idaho's Silver Valley and this historic mining community has quite a few stories to tell.

Northern Pacific was the first railroad to arrive here in the early 1880s, during the beginning of North 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.

But A.J.

Prichard is the fellow that is usually credited.

- [ANNOUNCER] John V. Wood is from Coeur d'Alene.

But it wasn't until he was teaching school in Oregon that he would write the "Railroads Through the Coeur d'Alenes."

- When I wrote "Railroads Through the Coeur d'Alenes" in 1983 I never envisioned that I would stop collecting photographs and information on the railroads.

[JOHN V. WOOD, AUTHOR] By the time that the revised edition came out, I had more photographs that were in the first edition.

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 tons of ore out of Burke and the other mining towns located in the 300-foot-wide Burke Canyon.

- [WOOD] There was Black Bear, Gem, Mace.

There was a whole series of them.

- [ANNOUNCER] During the peak of mining operations more than 5,000 people lived here.

But by the middle of the 20th century mining operations 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.

That's the main thing that really is still left in Burke.

There's not much else.

- [ANNOUNCER] But like every ghost town, Burke has a myth or two attached to it.

- [SHAUNA HILLMAN] "Ripley's Believe It or Not" declared Canyon Creek and Burke so narrow that the businesses had to roll in their awnings so the trains could get by.

Kinda.

- [ANNOUNCER] They were actually rolled back to prevent sparks from catching them on fire.

Ripley's also claimed that train tracks ran through the Tiger Hotel's lobby.

They didn't.

The passed under its breezeway.

- [VICKI ALLMANN] I talked to one of the miners, an old fella now, he had rooms right above where that train came through, that portal here.

And, he said when that train came through you better know when it was coming so you could close your windows.

He said, because if you didn't close your windows, he said your room would just fill up with soot and smoke.

He had one of those things and he- - [ANNOUNCER] Vicki Allmann and Shauna Hillman are literally institutions around Wallace.

Shauna ran the Northern Pacific Railroad Depot Museum for years 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, NORTH IDAHO 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 and these guys had families to feed and they knew that there would be times that some of them wouldn't come back out of the mines and so that 50 cents was important to them.

- [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 interests and horror that he declared martial law.

- [HILLMAN] And the Buffalo soldiers are brought from Montana to make order.

- [ALLMANN] The treasurer of the union was charged with, I don't know, sedition and all kinds of things, you know.

But he was the only one.

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] Those miners, those union miners, knew what was coming.

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

[EXPLOSION] - [HILLMAN] It 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.

And the Buffalo soldiers were brought in again to keep the peace.

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] In the early 1900s the nation's sixth, and final transcontinental railroad started building its 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 wanted to be the fastest railroad.

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.

But faster meant more, more high trestles and more tunnels, including the 1.6 mile long St. Paul tunnel.

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

- [RICK MARSHALL, AVERY RESIDENT] By more than 200-million dollars it was, it was more expensive than any of the others and 200-million than it was estimated to build.

I don't know.

I've wondered why they picked that route in the first place.

- [ANNOUNCER] The Milwaukee Road was extremely 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.

- [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.

People say railroading gets in your blood and I believe that's a true story.

You get to know everybody, you grow up around it and it's just, it's part of your life, I guess.

- [ANNOUNCER] Avery developed a reputation as the little railroad town that could.

It handled every train that came its way.

- [MARSHALL] The town was going 24/7, always because of the railroad, there were trains going 24/7.

- [ANNOUNCER] 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.

And in this day, 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, and it was electrified.

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] David Asleson is one of Avery's beloved sons.

He worked here for the Forest Service for 18 years.

People still call him Norgy when he comes back to visit.

- [DAVID "NORGY" ASLESON, AUTHOR] I grew up in Minnesota, and my family is Norwegian.

And so when I first came to Avery, you know I had that strong Norwegian accent which I probably still do.

And so they called me Norgy and that name, that nickname stuck with me ever since.

And so, yeah.

- [[ANNOUNCER] Norgy co-authored "Up the Swiftwater" with Sandra Crowell, a pictorial history book about life along the Upper St. Joe River.

It includes chapters on Avery as well as the Milwaukee Road.

- I guess that is my largest contribution is the preservation of the history of the Milwaukee Road and the history of the small community of Avery because it remains my favorite place in the world.

- [ANNOUNCER] There's also a chapter dedicated to the Devil's Broom, more commonly known as The Big Burn of 1910.

- [NORGY] The 1910 fire, of course, altered the history of the entire North Idaho and beyond.

- [ANNOUNCER] The Big Burn torched more than three million acres across North Idaho and Western Montana, killing at least 85 people.

Wallace was nearly destroyed, forcing the railroad to evacuate trainloads of people.

The Forest Service had to rely on anyone it could to fight the fire, including prisoners.

Ranger Ed Pulaski saved 43 men in his fire crew by holding them at gunpoint inside a mine shaft.

The Milwaukee Road's two main trestles survived.

Avery did too, thanks to railroaders and the Buffalo Soldiers.

- [MARSHALL] They put people on the train and evacuated the town and took them up into the tunnels to try to save them.

And the Buffalo soldiers stayed here in Avery and they back burned the mountains.

- [ANNOUNCER] You can still see remains of the fire not far from Avery.

- [ANNOUNCER] The Cedar Cemetery, yeah, it's huge, huge cedars from the 1910 fire.

It's always been symbolic, especially as I remember as a kid driving through there.

Yeah, there was literally probably twice or three times as many of them then there is now, and so when you drive through in the fog and if the light was just right it looked like huge, big snowmen or statues or something out there, ghosts.

[HOPEFUL MUSIC] - [ANNOUNCER] The Milwaukee Road may be gone, but it left behind something special, the Avery Depot.

It's now a museum.

- [SANDA PICCININI] Passengers would have come through this door.

- [ANNOUNCER] Sanda Piccinini says the depot, along with other facilities in Avery, helped make passenger wait time tolerable, if not enjoyable.

- [SANDA PICCININI, AVERY DEPOT MUSEUM DIRECTOR] They had an hour that it took them to switch the engines out and they just needed something for the passengers to do.

They built two huge tennis courts, had a children's play area.

And, then the Beanery, of course, was open 24/7.

- [ANNOUNCER] And then there was the Avery fishpond, built in 1908 and still here today.

- [SANDA] They built the fishpond for people from the East Coast to see what a trout looked like.

- [NORGY] It's probably got great, great, great grandchildren of the original trout in there.

- [ANNOUNCER] Well, not exactly.

- [SANDA] These are new ones.

We have to change them out probably anywhere from nine to twelve years.

- [ANNOUNCER] The museum has a rare Hiawatha Twin Grove Dining Car.

It was previously gathering dust in Portland, Oregon.

- [SANDA] And we were fortunate to be able to buy it and get it moved up here.

There were six of them built in the 40s and there's two left, and this is one of them.

- [MARSHALL] It was an ugly pale green when we got it and the inside had been gutted out.

And we finally put the car back together as it originally was.

- [ANNOUNCER] If there ever was a silver lining to the demise of the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Extension, it's the Route of the Hiawatha.

The trail is mostly downhill and family friendly.

And the views are a site to behold.

The Camas Prairie Railroad in North Idaho is also a site to behold.

Known as the Railroad on Stilts, it opened in 1908 and operated for 92 years.

- [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.

NP and UP had been eyeing the area for years.

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

This was a huge agricultural and timber area, and looked very profitable for the railroads.

- [ANNOUNCER] But there wasn't enough revenue potential to support two lines.

So, in the spirit of profits and power the two operated the railroad together.

- [FOSTER-RENK] And they alternated the offices of president and vice president to share that power.

Passenger traffic was very popular at first.

- [ANNOUNCER] But when the agricultural recession hit in the 1920s, passenger traffic dropped dramatically, forcing the Camas Prairie Railroad to reassess things.

- [FOSTER-RENK] They made up the revenue with mail contracts.

These continued into 1955 and then were cut off.

And so, at that point they discontinued passenger service on the Camas Prairie.

Well, Camas Prairie Railnet 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.

[CALM MUSIC] [TRAIN RUMBLES] [ANNOUNCER] Sandpoint, Idaho is a railroad enthusiast's dream.

50 or more trains pass through here every day.

It's been called the funnel since the early days.

- [WILL VALENTINE] Well, It's because of the three railroads that came through here.

The Great Northern and the Northern Pacific, and the Spokane International.

- [ANNOUNCER] BNSF is the mail railroad that comes through Sandpoint today.

Will Valentine is a board member for the Bonner County Historical Society and a self-proclaimed railroad enthusiast.

His knowledge of North Idaho Railroads, including the Spokane International Railway is extensive.

- [VALENTINE] It was built by a man named D.C. Corbin and he wanted to connect Spokane to Canada.

So, he built this railroad in 1906.

- [ANNOUNCER] The Spokane International passed through Sandpoint on its way to Idaho's border with British Columbia, where it linked up with the Canadian Pacific's SOO Line.

- [VALENTINE] It's really funny because there was a train called SOO Spokane Train Deluxe, and it ran from about 1907 to 1914.

And for a while, that luxury train [WILL VALENTINE, RAILROAD ENTHUSIAST] beat the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific from Spokane to get to Chicago.

- [ANNOUCER] But like other railroads, the Spokane International found out hauling timber was much more profitable than carrying passengers.

- [VALENTINE] They put in a place called Forest Siding.

And this where the logging railroads would bring their flat cars with the logs down.

So, then the Spokane International hauled them down here to Humbird.

- [NARRATOR] That lasted until The Depression when the Humbird Mill shut down and the SI was forced into receivership.

Passenger service was halted in 1954 and Union Pacific took control in 1958.

Jack McElroy's father worked for the Spokane International for over 20 years.

So, Jack and his brother grew up around railroaders.

[JACK MCELROY, RAILROAD ENTHUSIAST] - All the guys that came to the house, I mean you had Uncle Fred, he was a conductor.

We had Bob McElroy my cousin, he was a conductor and a switch man and a brakeman.

- [NARRATOR] Over time Jack came to believe the Spokane International wasn't getting the kind of recognition it deserved.

So he decided to produce a DVD to honor his father and some of the men he grew up around.

- [MCELROY] And a lot of the guys they were really happy when I decided to do the interviews.

They were really excited.

- [NARRATOR] Jack McElroy's friend Jack Woodbury was a fireman for the SI in the 50s and 60s.

One day he decided to film one of his runs from the inside of an F-7 locomotive like this one.

It's a day he'll always remember.

[JACK WOODBURY, RAILROAD ENTHUSIAST] - All that power you have, and all that authority, it is something, it is, it's amazing.

It's just something that's in my blood, and I love it.

I'd do it again.

[CHUCKLE] - [NARRATOR] Jack McElroy included the film footage in his DVD.

- [WOODBURY] We left Eastport, Idaho and I was firing for a fellow by the name of Ed Glenn.

It's a beautiful trip from Eastport to Bonners or Bonners to Eastport.

It's just wonderful country, beautiful.

- [NARRATOR] The train was bound for Sandpoint but to Jack's dismay, he ran out of film long before that.

- [WOODBURY] What a bummer 'cause it was a beautiful day, the weather was nice, it was warm, and it had made a wonderful trip, but I ran out right as we got to Bonners Ferry at the depot.

And, I didn't have another reel with me.

[SNICKER] - [NARRATOR] Model railroading is definitely fun but it can also be a great way to learn railroad history.

And members of the Caldwell Model Railroad Club and Historical Society are happy to share what they know.

- [CLUB MEMBER] Now watch your train, here it comes.

- [MIKE LOVE] The more we can educate people and get the word out that railroading really is more Idaho than people realize.

A lot of the communities that are currently here in Idaho would not be here if it wasn't for the railroad.

- [ANNOUNCER] Mike Love says the hobby of model railroading is on the rise.

[MIKE LOVE, MODEL RAILROADER] - More and more people are getting interested.

We're making so many advances in what you can do with these trains.

Kids like the electronic part of it, so it becomes more and more involved for them.

It's really a hobby for all ages.

- [NARRATOR] The club has layouts depicting Sun Valley, Burke, Nampa and Lewiston for example and the attention to detail is remarkable.

- [LOVE] If you can't tell if it's a scale model and it looks like you went out and took an actual picture, then you've hit the perfect scene.

- [NARRATOR] The Camas Prairie Railroad's Half Moon Trestle layout is about as close to perfect as you can get.

- [LOVE] It was hand built by one of our club members.

And they built it in their garage, upside down and thought it in and we made the layout fit to it.

[STEAM WHISTLE] - [NARRATOR] The Sumpter Valley Railroad's locomotive number three carries tourists today but in its prime it hauled logs.

And like many steam locomotives it can be a bit temperamental.

[UPBEAT COUNTRY MUSIC] - [JIM GRIGSBY] Well, steam locomotives, it's hard to put this into terms that don't sound trite, but they have a personality.

The number three locomotive, our Heisler, we like to kid ourselves, and it's more than just kidding, that in the morning before you fire it up [JIM GRIGSBY, SUMPTER VALLEY RAILROAD] you polish the thing up, rub it down a little bit and tell it what a fine locomotive it is and make sure you got a smile on your face when you climb in there, because if it doesn't like the way you look it won't do a thing for you.

Number three was built in 1915 for William H. Eccles Lumber Company.

William H. Eccles being the brother of David Eccles who founded the Sumpter Valley Railway.

It operated out of Austin, which is about 60 miles west of Baker City.

I think it was about 1923, Eccles shut down their mill in Austin and started moving their stuff over to Cascade, Idaho.

Then they hauled number three over to Cascade, finished building more track and used it sporadically for logging.

- [ANNOUNCER] Number three was sold to a Colorado company, and later came back to Cascade in another sale.

It finished its logging career as an auxiliary boiler when the mill shut down.

- [GRIGSBY] In 1971 it was brought back to Baker City.

July 4th, 1976, they started operating.

They've been operating ever since, every summer since then.

[UPBEAT COUNTRY MUSIC] - [ANNOUNCER] Guy Burnham and Jinks Hunter wanted a shop on their property in the South Idaho desert.

So, why did they build it in the form of a replica train depot?

- [GUY BURNHAM] Why is kind of accidental because we were envisioning building a shop out here and thought it might be cool to make it look sort of like a railroad building.

- [ANNOUNCER] Then they just happened upon a set of railroad depot plans at a train show and swap meet.

- [GUY BURNHAM, RAILROAD ENTHUSIAST] I bought the set of plans and that sort of started this entire manic effort here to build a recreation depot.

- [ANNOUNCER] Manic perhaps, but interesting and right in line with Guy's interest in how the railroads impacted society.

- [BURNHAM] You know, the technologies that were developed by the railroads to deal with their business had ramifications later for other things.

You could send a telegram to Sears and Roebuck in Chicago and they'd put your item on a train, railway express, and three or four days later you'd go down to the station and pick it up.

It's like Amazon, [CHUCKLE] only a little slower.

- [ANNOUNCER] For Eriks Garsvo, studying and preserving railroad history is more than a hobby, it's a calling.

[ERIKS GARSVO] - I grew up literally down the street from the main Union Pacific line through the Los Angeles area, [ERIKS GARSVO, RAILROAD ENTHUSIAST] so I grew up on my swing set watching the train go by.

- [ANNOUNCER] Eriks and his father have several working railroad artifacts on their property in Kuna, and they've tweaked them just a little.

- It's a 1940s crossing signal and now controlled on my iPhone.

- [ANNOUNCER] Eriks and turned his passion into a career.

He leads tours at the Boise Depot and runs the Owyhee County Museum in Murphy where he designed the museum's Boise, Nampa and Owyhee railroad exhibit.

- [GARSVO] So, the Boise Nampa and Owyhee railroad was the railroad that ran from Nampa to Murphy and it was the brainchild of Colonel William Dewey.

Colonel Dewey was a mine owner up in the Silver City area.

- [ANNOUNCER] The railroad was originally built to serve the mines in the early 1900s but it mostly hauled cattle and sheep out of the Murphy stockyards.

The line was sold to the Idaho Northern in 1907 and in 1912, an engineer hauling a trainload full of sheep misjudged a sharp s-curve here, not far from the Guffey Bridge.

- [GARSVO] And when the train got to this location, instead of swinging around this curve here he went straight and he tipped over on the left side of the berm here because he was going too fast.

The engineer was badly burned, the brakeman later died in the hospital in Nampa.

But this is the site where it all took place here.

The berm still exists and the rails were actually on this berm until 1947.

- [ANNOUNCER] Today the Guffey Bridge is part of Celebration Park and is Idaho's largest historical artifact.

[CHURCH SERVICE AUDIO] - [ANNOUNCER] Immigrants from across the globe were vital to building Idaho's railroads.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pocatello was the center of life for Greek railroaders and their families, including Sophie McCurry's.

- [SOPHIE MCCURRY] My grandfather came to this country in 1900.

He was 17 years old and he worked for the railroad back east for quite a while.

[SOPHIE MC CURRY, POCATELLO RESIDENT] In 1924 he came to Idaho and became a section foreman.

My father came over here in 1947.

He had been in the war for the Greek Navy.

He was in the Balkan Olympics, and he won medals.

But yet, he told me his greatest accomplishment was becoming an American citizen and working with Union Pacific Railroad.

It gave him a great life.

I think the Greeks were very hard workers.

A lot of them came from humble beginnings and this was the land of opportunity, this was a big deal.

Pocatello was built by the immigrants.

- [ANNOUNCER] Paul Okamura's family also came from humble beginnings.

Both of his grandfathers worked for the railroad in Nampa when they first arrived from Japan.

- Their idea when they came to America was to pick up gold and fill their suitcases with gold and go back to Japan [PAUL OKAMURA, MIDDELTON RESIDENT] and be able to have enough money start a business.

But they never found the gold, they never got rich, and they never went back.

- [ANNOUNCER] Paul's stories inspired his daughter-in-law Julie Vance to pursue a master's degree in history.

She wrote her thesis on Japanese railroad workers in Idaho and the Intermountain West.

- [JULIE VANCE] What so many people don't know about our history, it's not just the mainstream [JULIE VANCE, RAILROAD ENTHUSIAST] George Washington fought in the Revolutionary War and we won and we became this great nation.

It's on the backs of a lot of immigrants and others that worked hard and tirelessly to get us where we are.

- [ANNOUNCER] Many of whom never found gold, never got rich and never had the opportunity to return to their homeland.

[MUSIC FADES OUT] [ANNOUNCER] Chinese railroad workers often performed the most dangerous jobs for low pay and under difficult conditions.

Several were buried here after they died in a tragic accident.

- [JIM LANCE, RETIRED UP SECTION CHIEF] A lot of lava basalt in that area.

And in order to level out the tracks they would dynamite through these cuts to level it out.

And the story is, is that they were in there and somehow the dynamite went off early.

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

He recently brought his friend Sam Hui here.

Sam's family immigrated to Idaho from Hong Kong in 1972 when Sam was just six years old.

- [LANCE] It's a very solemn spot for me and I can only imagine what it is for you being this is your people.

This could be the people from your village.

[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.

I can't even imagine what they went through.

- [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.

- [LANCE] Very humbling place here.

I like seeing the flowers.

- [ANNOUNCER] It replaced a broken, weathered gravestone of an unknown Chinese railroad worker.

- [LANCE] It was a non-descript, little white stone about two feet tall, a foot wide.

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.

It's where most of the railroad workers came from.

So as far as I know, this is the only privately funded memorial dedicated to Chinese railroad workers in the continental United States.

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.

[MELLOW GUITAR] ♪ 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 travels 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] ♪ When I die Lord bury me deep ♪ Way down on old Chestnut Street ♪ ♪ Place the stones at my head and feet ♪ ♪ Tell them all that I've gone to sleep ♪ ♪ Place the stones at my head and feet ♪ ♪ Tell them all that I've gone to sleep.

♪ - [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.