7-13-2020 Challis, ID

So where's Albertson's from here?

It couldn’t have been a more beautiful drive between Caldwell and Challis.  The road snakes through canyons then up the sides of the mountains and down along the Salmon River.  The Salmon River accompanied us for 150 miles or more.  It flows north, by the way, which looked a little strange to us but slowly we grew accustomed to it.  It’s a beauty:  clear, cold water drifting lazily or splashing over the rocks creating white rapids under an umbrella of royal blue sky.  It made our drive seem dreamy.

Driving along the Salmon River

The Sawtooth Mountains way out there

It is windy in Challis!  I’m sayin’ windy!  Gusts of 30 mph.  The locals say that it is like this all the time.  At the campground, our canopies retracted themselves more than once.  It was not conducive to barbecuing outside.  Our Round Valley RV Park hostess, Roberta, recommended that we eat at The Real Deal Smokehouse.  If only it were only open on Sunday and Monday.  OK, we’ll cook inside!  So we stopped in at the local grocery store in search of the elusive walleye.  No luck.  But we found big slabs of catfish and had a grand old feast.

Bison Jump

The Yankee Fork State Historic Site in town is a small park with a collection of mining, ranching and farming artifacts from the 1800s.  Nearby is a small cliff which archeologists and anthropologists have analyzed.  Hundreds of years ago, long before the white guys arrived, the ancient Indians used this cliff to “hunt” buffalo.  There are 2 theories.  1)  They scared the buffalo into stampeding but when they got to the cliff, they stopped and the Indians got a good bead on them with their arrows.  2)  The stampeding animals simply ran off the cliff to their deaths.  The cliff is called “Bison Jump.” 

Wells Fargo 

There was a lot of prospecting going on out here in the early 1800s.  Lore has it that an old guy with two bay horses told prospectors about a big lode over yonder.  The prospectors subsequently named the nearby river Bay Horse Creek and soon, when big veins of lead and silver were found, the town of Bayhorse sprang up.  A mill and smelter were constructed and people, including women, flocked to the area.  The population grew to 300.  There were general stores, meat markets, several saloons (naturally) and what is now called the Wells Fargo building.  I don’t really understand the story too well but two miners, Gilmer and Salisbury, who owned some businesses including Wells, Fargo & Company, had something to do with it.  The Wells Fargo building was substantially reinforced to support and protect tons of precious metals until they could be transported to be sold.

The Holiday Inn Express of its time

Many of the structures and artifacts at Bayhorse still stand, if a little wobbly.  Back then, the rocks were hauled in from the mines and dumped into the mill which was made up of many “stamps.”  The stamps crushed the rock smaller and smaller until it was a powder.  The sound of the stamps thundered and echoed through the canyons 24/7 and if that didn’t drive one mad, the powder itself was the cause of many deaths due to a lung disease called, “silicosis.”  (Hmmm.  Shoulda mandated masks!)  Then it was washed through wooden ducts (sluices) to the smelter.  The smelter operated at 2400F using charcoal that was cooked up in the nearby kilns.  The smelting process brought up lead and the precious metals and separated them from the rocks.  When the veins of valuable ore dried up, Bayhorse died and became the ghost town that the curious explore today.

The mill.  The rocks were dumped in at the top,
flowed down through a series of stamps
and at the bottom, a sluice carried
the powder off to the smelter.

A miner's residence

Five stamp machine that crushed rocks
day and night.  They ran on hydraulics
or electricity.

Two-holer biffee

A conduit (sluice)

Don't know what this is but it was
made in Racine and Waukesha, WI

The owners of Wells Fargo lived here

In the late afternoon, we decided to drive up to Salmon where a restaurant, The Shady Nook, features walleye dinners.  Once again, the drive followed the Salmon River and the shores were dotted with tiny villages.  Horses, sheep and cows graze on the great expanses of ranch land.  Occasionally, an old, broken, abandoned ranch house still barely stands in the fields, remnants of someone’s life dream left behind.  There are also “dugouts,” caves dug into the hillside where “Idaho Hermits” lived, guys such as Dugout Dick, Buckskin Bill and Hank the Hermit.  We couldn’t go to see them though because the government has closed them off.  They’re too dangerous!  In Salmon, we found the Odd Fellows’ Bakery where we had our eye on the homemade bread and since we had never eaten it, a couple of blocks of “local sheep cheese.”  We’ll have to let you know on that one.  On to American Falls, Idaho!

I don't know what these birds are.  They
are the only wildlife we spotted between
Challis and Salmon.  I bet
they're delicious!