North Idaho’s Silver Valley is home to the planet’s richest and most prolific silver mines. Recorded silver production from the Coeur d’Alene Mining District long ago surpassed that of the more famous Comstock and Potosi districts. By 1984, for example, production from one Coeur d’Alene District silver mine, the Sunshine, exceeded that produced during the entire history of the Comstock.

In the 1880s, with its newfound wealth of lead and silver (zinc, regarded back then as a throwaway metal until the advent of galvanization two decades hence) the Silver Valley was the spawning ground of the Western Labour Movement and of Women’s Suffrage. By 1910 the Silver Valley had distinguished itself as a hotbed of contrarian thinking, including the teaching of evolution.

Over 100 shafts have been sunk on ore-bearing veins in the Silver Valley since its discovery 120 years ago. Most played out, but a few paid out – and continue to do so. Fortunes were made and lost. The winners endowed chairs in places like the University of California and built mansions and skyscrapers up and down the West Coast; the losers repaired to their barstools to calculate their next play. In every real sense, the Silver Valley was, and remains, the Old West.

Thirty stock companies bearing ownership of sections of the world’s richest silver vein system remain publicly traded out of the 130 or so that used to trade on the Spokane Stock Exchange. Wallace, as late as 1980 headquarters to five New York Stock Exchange-listed companies, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Listen, and you will be able to hear the boot-spurs striking the sidewalks in nearby Burke.

But you came here to golf, fish, cycle and hunt, didn’t you? The Coeur d’Alene District features the world-famous Route of the Hiawathas and the paved Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, as well as some superb back-country mountain bike trails. The District is also host to some of the finest fly-fishing opportunities in the world, but please, catch and release, and leave some for the rest. Golf on the top of Gold Run Mountain at Shoshone Golf Course, with a view reaching Canada, Montana and Washington, or from the rolling but treacherous hills of West Shoshone Golf Course. Elk, deer, grouse, pheasant, ducks – well, we’d like to keep them to ourselves – so at least buy a tag.