Wallace Family records, 1926-1959

From the 1920s, Merl R. Wallace operated the United States Forest Service Cabin Creek ranger station, 6 miles upstream of Taylor Ranch, now the Taylor Wilderness Research Station, located in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Merl married Jeannette (Jean) Orr in May 1927 and shortly after Merl and Jean developed the Flying W cattle ranch in nearby Big Creek Idaho. While living there, they had a son named William Borah (Bill) Wallace. The Wallaces eventually left the area and divorced. Jean raised Bill in Boise and Merl moved to Alaska and remarried. Bill Wallace attended the University of Idaho, graduating with a degree in Forestry in 1951, going on to deliver mail along Big Creek by horseback in 1952.

In 2005, Taylor Ranch managers Jim and Holly Akenson met Bill Wallace and his wife Mary Acker at a College of Natural Resources alumni event and invited them to visit Taylor Ranch. It was Bill's first time on Big Creek in 30 years. They flew in and were taken up on a pack trip to Cabin Creek and saw the old cabin where Bill was born. As this new relationship developed, Bill Wallace and Mary Acker decided to donate money to the Unviersity of Idaho to renovate Taylor's historic Lewis Cabin, constructed by homesteader Dave Lewis between 1911 and 1921, and who had been a friend of Bill's mother, Jean.

Unfortunately, neither Bill nor Mary lived to see the cabin renovation completed in summer 2008. However, Bill's daughter Barbara, flew out to Taylor to see the completion of her father's work. It was about this time that Barbara entrusted her family's historical material to the Taylor Ranch.