The "museum" is actually the Wallace Chamber of Commerce. At their site on River Road just south of I-90 they have put together displays of mining machinery, geology and rock displays, some sculpture and a memorial to the firefighters who lost their lives in the
Great Fire of 1910, which burned several towns in northeast Washington, northern Idaho, and western Montana.
This, the third of the machines on display at the Chamber of Commerce is a stamp or hammer mill, a machine used to reduce pieces of ore to a smaller size. Stamp mills were made in a great many sizes, having anywhere from a single hammer to a dozen or more. This particular mill has five. Stamp mills were usually employed to reduce ore before shipping it to a smelter for processing and metal extraction.
Model number 112, this mill was manufactured by Fraser & Chalmers of Chicago, IL. The hammers, or stamps, would be lifted several inches by cams rotating on a shaft. The cams would then lose contact with the hammers which would then free fall, crushing pieces of ore beneath them. In the west mills of this type were first driven by steam engines, later by diesel or gasoline stationary engines or, where plentiful electricity was available, electric motors. This was a late nineteenth or early twentieth century machine.