Jan. 26--People called Harry F. Magnuson "Mr. Wallace," but his reach stretched far beyond his hometown.

He saved historic buildings from wrecking balls and helped rescue Gonzaga University from financial collapse. Magnuson believed that tourism and recreation would revive his beloved Silver Valley, and he lived long enough to see his vision become reality.

Magnuson, 85, died Saturday at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane. His son, John Magnuson, said his father was being treated for pneumonia when he died of a heart attack.

"Everybody has a Harry Magnuson story," said Ron Garitone, mayor of Wallace. "The man loved the little town. He grew up in it. He still has a house here. He's what we'd call a 'good old Wallace boy,' but his (influence) goes way beyond our little community."

Magnuson's grandparents settled in the Silver Valley and worked its mines, ran its boarding houses and fed miners in its restaurants. Magnuson was born March 14, 1923, one of three sons of a father who owned a meat market and acted as the town's unofficial historian. The elder Magnuson instilled in his boys a "strong sense of history and a strong sense of family ties," as Magnuson's brother, Richard, once said in an interview.

Magnuson was recruited into the Hecla Mining Co., right after graduating from Wallace High School. Magnuson served in the Navy during World War II and eventually finished a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School. He returned to Hecla but left shortly after and "with money from his mother, his lifelong confidant and business adviser, he set himself up as a public accountant," writes John Fahey in "Hecla: A Century of Western Mining."

But while developing his accounting firm, H.F. Magnuson Co., he kept his hand solidly in the mining business. He was on the boards of Hecla, Golconda Mining and Bunker Hill and was president of the Silver Dollar Mining Co., among many other mining ventures and investments. He was always referred to as a "mining magnate" in newspaper stories.

The firm grew to include real estate, banks, hotels and shopping malls throughout the Inland Northwest, from the Moscow Inn in Moscow, Idaho, to University City in the Spokane Valley.

In a 1990 interview with writer Cynthia Taggart, he said: "I started from scratch and have been scratching ever since."

He was able to use his financial talents to help Gonzaga as it struggled financially in the late 1960s. Magnuson joined its board of trustees.