In Mullan, local history and trails through the Idaho Panhandle go hand in hand. The Captain John Mullan Museum is located in the IOOF building at 229 Earle Street. There are also historic buildings and routes with very different features, from the paved Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes to the Route of the Hiawatha, with its tunnels and high bridges. Mullan offers ways to connect local history with outdoor exploration on a trip.
The Mullan Road and the City’s History
The historic Mullan Road ran through what is now the city and was the first road across the Rocky Mountains. In northern Idaho, it is connected to several chapters of regional history: transportation development and early exploration are part of the story, as are settlement, military activity, engineering, mining, and the history of Indigenous people. The road provides a thread for placing these different historical topics in context, without reducing them to mining alone.
The Captain John Mullan Museum displays historic furnishings, vintage clothing, photographs, and newspapers. The collection also includes mining artifacts and memorabilia from local school, sports, and fire department life, as well as from a drugstore. These varied objects offer a tangible sense of the topics brought together at the museum: personal and community memories, as well as mining.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church is also one of Mullan’s historic sites. It is located at 104 Hunter Street in East Shoshone Park. The building was originally constructed as a schoolhouse and converted into a church in 1892. Old Mullan Cemetery, also known as Pioneer Cemetery, is the city’s oldest cemetery and dates back to 1897. It lies on a wooded hillside. The church and cemetery thus have different histories, but together they add a former schoolhouse and an early burial place to the picture of local development.
Shoshone Park and Historic Trails
The wooded Shoshone Park lies at the foot of Runt Mountain, a peak in the Bitterroot Mountains. The park features a creek, reservable kitchen shelters, and a historic cabin belonging to Captain John Mullan. The West Kitchen Pavilion was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1939. Nature and architectural history are found side by side in the park, though they do not date from the same period.
Shoshone Park is about three miles east of Mullan; the road route follows Friday Avenue and a road that becomes Larson Road. The Mullan Road runs alongside the park and is now used as a hiking and snowmobile trail. The historic name therefore also relates to present-day trail use here. The distance is given as a road distance, not walking time.
Two Distinct Route Profiles
The Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes is a paved trail through the Idaho Panhandle between Mullan and Plummer. It has twenty developed trailheads and twenty scenic rest stops with tables. The Route of the Hiawatha is about six miles east of Mullan and offers different features: the 15-mile biking and hiking trail runs downhill and includes ten tunnels and seven high trestle bridges. This makes it possible to choose between a paved route with multiple trailheads and rest stops and a route described by its length and tunnels and bridges. Both are distinct trail options; the details given do not include walking or cycling times.
Mullan brings together a clearly identified historic road, museum collections, and other local landmarks with a range of trails. For your trip, you can focus on local and architectural history or compare the different route profiles. The individual topics remain easy to distinguish: the Mullan Road runs through the present-day city, the Route of the Hiawatha is east of it, and the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes connects Mullan with Plummer.
Discover more destinations: Wallace, Kellogg.
View the broader travel guide: Shoshone County.
