Gyro Days & Lead Creek Derby

At noon on the Saturday of Gyro Days, a person chosen for the honor drops a large, multicolored leather ball from the Last Chance Bridge in Mullan into the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. From there the Gyro Ball floats downstream about seven miles to the Sixth Street Bridge in Wallace. Spectators line the route, and those on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes can follow the ball into town. Members of the Wallace Gyro Club move along with it and keep it going past the trees and shrubs on the banks. A file photograph the Hagadone News Network ran in June 2026 shows Rod Plank working the ball out of the river during an earlier running.

“Going strong after 80 years, the whole town of Wallace gathers in the town 6 miles uphill, drops a massive beach ball in the river, then follows and races the ball down the river on bikes, skateboards and parade floats with plenty of adult beverages on hand,” Wallace resident Courtney Frieh told the Shoshone News-Press in 2023. “It’s a fun time for both adults and families and the ever-changing mountain weather always makes for an unpredictable and adventurous time.”

The ball from Mullan to Sixth Street

The trip can take anything from a couple of hours to five and a half. In 2019 the ball took roughly three and a half hours to reach the Sixth Street Bridge. The longest float on record came in 2015, at 5:36.54. The 2026 ball finished in 5:09:13.

The time matters because of the tickets. Gyro Club members and Wallace merchants and restaurants sell them in the weeks before the derby, and each ticket carries a computer-generated time. The holder whose time comes closest to the ball’s actual finish takes first prize, 50 one-ounce silver rounds. Thirteen cash prizes follow. In 2026 the newspaper reported that a sharp rise in silver prices had made the first prize the most valuable silver award in the derby’s history. The club’s list of winners named Stacie Bishop of Wallace for the 50 silver dollars. The $100, $50, and $25 prizes went to ticket holders in Kellogg, Hecla, Mullan, Osburn, Wallace, and one in Montana.

The ball dropper changes every year. In 2022 the honor went to the family of Dave Rounds, a longtime Wallace High School coach, chairman of the Wallace school board, and Gyro member, who had died the previous October. In 2023 it went to Mike Alldredge, a longtime educator and booster who had served on the city council and as mayor. Announcing him, Gyro Club member Mike Dexter said, “We are proud to boast of him being a longtime member of the Gyro Club.” The 2026 ball dropper was Dave DeRoos. He spent much of his career in Southern California and then came home to Wallace with his wife, Bonnie. Since their return the couple has given a good deal of time to community work.

Radio Day, the midway, and the drum corps

The derby closes a week that begins on Wednesday. Radio Day was once a radiothon on Wallace’s KWAL 620 AM. Since that station went off the air, the Gyros have broadcast instead on Facebook Live from the sidewalk next to the Wallace Elks on Wednesday afternoon. There are jokes, games, food, beverages, and derby tickets, and anyone passing is invited to stop for a hamburger and a beer. In 2022 and 2023 club members Chase Sanborn and Greg Bosen ran it. In 2026 festival-goers were asked to remember Sano Haldi, a longtime fixture of the festival who had died the previous October, and to have a beer on Sano.

On Thursday the carnival lights come up in the streets of downtown Wallace. The midway has rides, games, and concessions, and vendors set up along the sidewalks. The Wallace Flower Project has the flowers blooming by then, and businesses decorate their storefronts. In 2022 it was the only carnival to visit the Silver Valley that year. “We have the same great carnival again this year that we have enjoyed the last few years,” Gyro president Charley Roberts said in 2026. Jimmy Striker had said nearly the same as president in 2022. With help from Silver Valley businesses and individuals, the club gives free carnival passes to children in grades K through 8 in Mullan and Wallace, handed out through the schools before the term ends.

Friday evening belongs to the Wallace Elks Drum & Bugle Corps. The corps starts at the 1313 Club around 6 p.m. and parades from pub to pub through town, playing from its repertoire of cheerful tunes, with the public encouraged to follow. In the 2022 telling, the band tours “all the Wallace watering holes.”

Gyro Days is the club’s sole fundraiser. Ticket sales pay for college scholarships, youth programs, and civic projects, and they help pay for the carnival.

A Thursday noon club and a cigarette fund

The club is older than the derby. On December 9, 1933, four young Wallace men met with two Spokane Gyros to form the “Wallace Thursday Noon Club.” The plan was to petition Gyro International for membership once the club had run for three months. The minutes describe “an association of young men representing various commercial and professional activities formed to create opportunities for social and business relations, as well as to promote genuine friendship and to encourage the discussion of community and civic questions.” The Wallace Gyro Club was installed on May 19, 1934, with ten members, under president J. W. Osborne.

During the Second World War the club voted to support the “Padre Jones Cigarett Fund.” The idea for raising the money came from the Gyro Club of Cranbrook, British Columbia. Cranbrook ran a “Barrel Derby,” selling tickets on how long a barrel would take to float between two points on the Kootenay River. Wallace substituted a ball and its own river, and the Lead Creek Derby began in 1942. According to the Shoshone News-Press, money from the first derby bought cigarettes for troops fighting in the war. That first year the prize was War Bonds, presented by Lana Turner, a Wallace native.

In Gyro District VIII’s account, the net proceeds later went to patriotic charities and then to the Gyro Community Service Fund, with much of the money directed to Wallace’s children. Over the years the derby grew into Gyro Days, with parades, fireworks, and a children’s carnival. The Wallace District Mining Museum keeps a photograph of a Gyro Days parade in its collection of the town’s history. In 2011 the District VIII convention met in Wallace for the 70th running, and the town’s rooms sold out within a few weeks of the previous convention. The only year without a derby was 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions stopped it.

At one time, the only traffic light on I-90 between Seattle and Boston was in Wallace, and Gyros were always at the light selling tickets.