Business Loop I-90 - Wallace
The Wallace business loop travels 1.243 miles through Wallace along portions of old U.S. 10. Beginning at Exit 61, Business Loop I-90 connects I-90 with Front Street (Harry F. Magnuson Way) via North Frontage Road. The route follows Front Street east along the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River to 5th Street and the Wallace street grid. 5th Street south to Bank Street east returns the route to I-90 at Exit 62.
Until September 12, 1991, the business loop represented the Interstate 90 mainline through the city of Wallace. The 1970 plan for I-90 took the freeway through the historic town, but efforts made by 1976 added most of Wallace to the National Historic Register. This lead to a shift of the freeway to bypass the community, which it does on a viaduct north along side the Coeur d’Alene River South Fork. The Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) Celebrating 50 years of Idaho's Interstates webpage read:
On May 8, 2010, the Wallace business loop was renamed “Harry F. Magnuson Way” in honor of Harry Magnuson, who was instrumental in seeing Interstate 90 bypassed around Wallace rather than through it. Mr. Magnuson sued the Idaho Transportation Department in 1970, claiming that the route of Interstate 90 through the city would have violated the federal Environmental Protection Act of 1970 by not conducting an environmental impact study. After years of lawsuits to 1976, the final alignment was recommended to take Interstate 90 north of Wallace and avoid its historic downtown (Shoshone News Press, 2010).To avoid complications from having the interstate pass through the heart of Wallace as originally planned, residents added the city to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. As a result, I-90 was routed away from town through a narrow mountain corridor by constructing a viaduct. U.S. 10 became Business Loop I-90, and the business loop was the defacto route for the interstate through the mid to late 1980s while the bypass was constructed. The I-90 bypass opened to traffic in 1991, and the traffic signal was retired a short time thereafter. That traffic signal later was returned to service on a Wallace intersection and remains functioning today.
— ITD, May 31, 2006
