Silver City Idaho, Owyhee County
https://visitidaho.org/travel-tips/silver-city-and-other-owyhee-treasures/
Steaming across the desert pavement, I slowed the truck to read a long litany of warnings: “No gas, repair service, water, or medical…no large campers…dry camping only…recommended high clearance vehicles.”
Idaho’s southwest is a desolate land. Dry, remote, and sparsely inhabited; it’s equal parts beautiful and palpably exposed. It feels like the kind of place where a person could simply walk off the earth…like mob man Rico Ponzo did back in 1997, hiding out as a local rancher for nearly a decade from a hit attempt on a Boston mob boss. Or like the three Hawaiian trappers from the Pacific Fur Company did back in 1819, who disappeared altogether exploring for riches in the form of beaver pelts along the aforenamed phonetic Owyhee River.
Nowadays, the County Sheriff still gets called into the Owyhee backcountry to pull out the occasional inattentive weekender. So I heeded the sign and wrenched the wheel, pulling the truck off the highway and aimed the grill due west, up crushed gravel towards Silver City.
old mining town in mountains.
Take a step back in time in Silver City.
Take a walk with me back 150 years if you will. While the nation was in the midst of a civil war, 2,500 miles to the west, Silver City was a booming mining metropolis supporting upwards of 300 homes and 75 businesses, including six general stores, eight saloons, two hotels, Idaho’s first paper, a brothel and profitable mines fueling the underbelly of it all.
Other-worldly chunks of crystallized gold and silver chloride amalgam called ruby silver, were plucked from the hills, fetching international attention, and with it, a meteoric economic boon below War Eagle’s summit. It wasn’t uncommon to find three-foot stacks of silver bars lined up next to the Wells Fargo building waiting for the next stagecoach out of town.
But it wasn’t long before the mountain’s rich veins dried up. By 1942, the mines officially closed up operations and with it, Silver City eventually fell dormant into the ghost-of-a-town it is today.
So much to explore in Silver City.
Silver City’s off-the-grid location (and happenstance luck avoiding natural disaster) has largely protected the town from the typical old west decay. Alone, in the mountains, it stands as one of the best-preserved ghost towns in the nation today. Seventy or so structures still remain standing ‘downtown’, just as they did back in the 1860’s. Well…almost so. No longer straight and square, most buildings sit slouched on the hills above Jordan Creek.
After a deep winter hibernation, Memorial Day marks the opening of Silver City Road, resuscitating shallow life back to the old silver town. So with the last weekend in May, we loaded the truck and made our own trip in the way-back machine to get a taste of what it was like ‘back in the day.’
Our truck belched past the warning sign and up the narrow, single-lane road, which folded over itself as it climbed to New York Summit. After an hour of slow and steady progress, we crossed the culvert bridge into town and hitched our truck beneath the slumping porch of the old Idaho Hotel.
historic idaho hotel in silver city. Get your adventures started at the old Idaho Hotel in Silver City. The kids spilled out and immediately hoofed it over to the old County Office building-turned-knick knack shop in search of modern day treasures in the form of polished rocks and souvenir flecks of gold.
The property is all private, and the entire township was listed as a historic district in 1972. Most structures remain as they were with minor maintenance keeping them appropriately preserved, like the old Masonic Hall bridging over Jordan Creek and the 1892 Standard School, with its fresh-whitewashed coat of paint.
A view of historic schoolhouse in Silver City.
We spent an hour or so walking the old dusty streets, circling out the backside of town with a hike up the granite slabs to the church. Perched over two mine shafts and situated well above the fray, Our Lady of Tears no doubt spent decades mindfully watching over the rough and tumble in the valley below.
We wrapped our day with a hike through Cemetery Gulch where the kids read epitaphs etched in marble and granite. Hard lives, war-torn, buried too young … every stone was a testament to the challenges of living in the old west.
Back at the truck, we saddled up and headed upstream along Jordan Creek, past the Silver City campground, where we found a quiet, riverside spot tucked away nicely under a stand of aspen and pine. The dead-end road saw occasional ATV traffic, but was mostly quiet, albeit the white noise babbling from Jordan Creek. The kids each grabbed a plate and staked a claim down by the creek, ‘panning for gold’ as my seven year old proclaimed. Flecks of quartz, schist, and pyrite kept them on edge for hours.
You never know what kind of treasures you’ll find during a visit to Silver City. The following morning we made a lazy
