North Idaho Trading Co.

The story

When Rick Asher opened this store on Bank Street back in 1983, it spent thirty-five years operating as a dense, reliable antique outlet. Then in 2018, Asher retired and passed the business to his nephew, Brady Bourgard—who had spent his youth behind the register alongside his mother and grandmother. Bourgard kept the antique firearms and regional hardware, but he opened the sluice gates to his own appetite for the macabre, transforming the multi-room building into what self-identifies as the "Weirdest Little Shop in the Northwest."

Step across the threshold and the floorboards give way to a tight maze of interconnected rooms stacked floor to ceiling. You aren't just browsing vintage pocket watches or mining pickaxes; you're threading your way through more than 150 pieces of taxidermy. An albino elk head watches from high on the wall while mounted lions, giraffes, and a hippo peer out from upper shelves above cases of vintage ammunition.

The showpieces tucked toward the back stray far beyond standard hunting trophies. Beneath glass rests a roughly six-foot mummified "mermaid," alongside a full-body articulated human skeleton and a vampire hunting kit. Between the local mining relics and display cases filled with skulls and tiny brass chamber pots, you didn't hear it from us, but it feels less like a commercial retail shop and more like a secret stash of Silver Valley eccentricities.