A Christmas present for Wallace

WALLACE — Richard “Dick” Caron, a local Silver Valley historian, recently gave Wallace a beautiful Christmas present.

During the tree-lighting ceremony at Magnuson Park in Wallace, Caron presented the Samuels Hotel sign. Caron and associates gathered resources to design, manufacture and install an interpretive sign with a surrounding brick frame.

The attractive sign is located at the site where the largest and finest hotel in Idaho once stood.

In 1908, “The Overland Monthly” magazine reported: “The city of Wallace is a veritable little jewel of a city, set snugly in its beautiful velvet case of green-clad mountains… but the pride of the city, and the whole district for that matter, is the new Samuels Hotel, a modern five-story brick structure that would be a source of pride to a city of 100,000 people.”

The Samuels has been the site of historical stories, one of which is the Rossi murder. Ron Roizen’s book, "The Rossi Murder: And the Unwritten Law in 1916's Wallace, Idaho," documents when Herman J. Rossi, one of Wallace’s leading citizens, shot and killed his young wife's lover, "Gabe" Dahlquist, in the Samuels’ lobby and got away with it.

The hotel had a good run from 1908 until it fell on hard times in the 1960s when the county took ownership of it. In 1974, the building was torn down to make room for the interstate relocation project.

A grant from the Idaho Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded through Greater Wallace Community Development Corporation provided the largest support for the sign. Contributions from numerous local businesses and individuals added community sponsorship.

Caron collects all matters of memorabilia having to do with Wallace’s history including items related to the Samuels. Some of the items illustrated on the sign include keys, a matchbook, a pocket knife, tokens, a brochure and a registration card.

Caron had a personal connection to the hotel as well.

The first floor housed several businesses, including the Wallace National Bank, the Samuels Club (later the Metals Bar), the Western Union office, the Veterans Club, an elegant café, a beauty salon and a brokerage house. Caron’s father, Joe Caron, leased and managed the Metals Bar in the early 1950s. His mother, Sigred (Egland) Caron, operated the Metals in the late 1950s.

Caron worked on other projects benefitting the city. He was instrumental in getting the entire town of Wallace listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Caron keeps an extensive file on everything that has happened in Wallace along with dates and comments on how things got started, which has facilitated town acknowledgment and historical integrity.

Shelves in Caron’s apartment hold antique toys, early posters of Wallace, old bamboo fishing rods, and jugs and bottles with “Wallace, Idaho” imprinted. He has the largest collection of Wallace brothel materials in existence. He has a collection of 200-300 early area postcards and literally thousands of items on paper. If it has the name of Wallace, Burke or any of the other area’s small communities, Caron has copies.

Caron prizes items from area old timers and prides himself on knowing who owned them. Dick Caron has been described as “Mr. Wallace” and he is certainly Wallace through and through.

Due to the efforts of Caron, the Samuels Hotel and the stories that took place there will be memorialized in the park. The building may be gone, but the spirit and history of the Samuels Hotel lives on.

Thank you for the beautiful present, Dick.