Wallace and the Oasis Bordello

Wallace was founded in 1884 in the narrow canyon of the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River and grew rich on the silver, lead and zinc of one of the world’s great mining districts. It burned twice – in 1890, and when the Great Fire of 1910 destroyed a third of the town – and lived through violent labour wars between miners’ unions and mine owners in the 1890s. In a town where men long vastly outnumbered women, drinking, gambling and prostitution were tolerated for generations; local leaders argued that regulated, contained brothels were good for order and business.

That tolerance lasted remarkably late. The Oasis, in the Bi-Metallic Building of 1895 on Cedar Street, was one of five brothels still operating in the 1980s. In 1988, as federal investigators closed in, its women left so quickly that they abandoned clothes, makeup, dishes and a handwritten price list. The building was later bought and preserved exactly as they left it, and the upstairs rooms now open as the Oasis Bordello Museum, with its madam’s room, the women’s stuffed toys and the money boxes decorated with stickers.

When the federal government planned to drive Interstate 90 through the middle of town, Wallace responded by getting every building downtown listed on the National Register of Historic Places, forcing the highway onto an elevated bypass. The result is a remarkably intact late-Victorian mining town – and a rich setting for ghost stories. The best known concerns Maggie, said to have died of a broken heart at the Jameson Saloon and to appear at the top of its stairs; the Oasis, the Masonic Lodge and other buildings have their own tales.

In October 2025 the town held its first Wallace Paranormal Festival, with ghost hunts at the Jameson and the Oasis Bordello that sold out quickly. Like the museum itself, the stories are best understood as a way of remembering the women who worked in Wallace’s brothels – real people whose lives the town is only now beginning to tell in their own right.

According to visitors’ accounts, people hear women talking in the empty upstairs rooms of the Oasis and smell pipe smoke or perfume; at the Jameson, Maggie is said to appear at the top of the stairs; and staff at other old buildings in town report unusual happenings.

The preserved upstairs rooms of the Oasis Bordello Museum at 605 Cedar Street, the Jameson Saloon and hotel, the Masonic Lodge and other buildings in the historic downtown.

Wallace is known for its intact historic downtown, its tongue-in-cheek “Center of the Universe” manhole cover, the Oasis Bordello Museum and, since 2025, a paranormal festival. The town’s brothel history has drawn growing attention from historians and documentary makers.