At the Wood River Museum, a mining

This Wagon Days, visitors to the Wood River Museum of History + Culture in Ketchum can ponder a newly acquired, mining-era painting that not only provides a window into the region’s mining past but holds insights into American art history and industry in the Mountain West.

The painting in question depicts the Philadelphia Smelter, an essential contributor to the Wood River Valley’s silver rush and the largest industrial complex in the Idaho territory during the 1880s. Much about the unsigned and undated work is a mystery.

When the museum’s regional history director, Mary Tyson, heard about the painting from an East Coast antiques dealer, she was immediately intrigued. She contacted Wood River Valley local John R. Lane—a former director of the Dallas Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum