The summer of 1884 was an exciting time to be living in the Wood River Valley. The mines were booming, the railroad had arrived in Hailey, and just a couple years earlier, Hailey had been declared the county seat of Alturas County in a hotly contested special election with Bellevue. Befitting its new status, the county had commissioned a new courthouse to be built in Hailey in 1882. At the cost of $40,000, funded through bonds, the new courthouse was the most expensive building in the Idaho Territory at the time. The courthouse was due to be completed in the summer of 1884, and the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a fraternal organization of Union Civil War veterans, was throwing a ball at the courthouse to celebrate its opening.
The event would also serve as a fundraiser for the fledgling Hailey GAR post, named E. D. Baker after US Senator Edward Dickinson Baker from Oregon. Baker, a staunch unionist and a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, was killed in an early battle of the Civil War and remains the only sitting US senator to ever die in a military engagement.
This small newspaper ad, now held in the archive of the Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History, was distributed to advertise this grand occasion to the valley’s residents. Though delayed a week due to construction delays, the inaugural ball took place on July 1st, 1884, and was a great success. Making the front-page of the Wood River Times Weekly the following day, it was written, “All of 60 couples were in attendance, including 10 couples from Bellevue, and dancing was continued until after 4 o’clock this morning – something quite unusual. Nor was any time lost between dances. Ten and nine quadrille sets were on the floor at one time, and very few failed to return after supper.” The paper also notes that even more would have been in attendance if not for the conditions of the roads preventing a group from Ketchum from attending. The Times reports that the ball surely brought in more than $100 for the GAR.
This newspaper ad and the event it advertised serve as a great window into the vibrancy and excitement in the valley at the peak of its mining boom. Similarly, the same courthouse from 1884 still stands in Hailey today and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an incredible glimpse into the history of the Wood River Valley.
