Skinner Toll Road Connects Silver City to California Supply Route [0td 05/19]

On May 19, 1866, with great fanfare in the Owyhee mining camps, the Skinner Toll Road opened for business. The new road vastly improved stagecoach and freight wagon traffic into Silver City and the other nearby mining towns.

Silas Skinner. Skinner Family Archives.

Silas Skinner, from the Isle of Man, followed the rush after the May, 1863 discovery of gold along Jordan Creek in the Owyhee Mountains [blog, May 18]. He prospected for a time, but the cost of supplies shocked him. Merchants sympathized, but pointed out that they paid huge shipping costs to stock their shelves.

Goods reached the area over two main routes. The older route started in Oregon and back-tracked the Old Oregon Trail as far as Boise City. Wagons then traversed thirty to forty miles of rough road to reach the Snake River. After paying the toll to cross the river by ferry, the freight road followed Reynolds Creek deep into the mountains. The final two miles leading to the pass over to Jordan Creek rises over a thousand feet … greater than a 10 percent grade.

By around 1865, more freight rolled directly out of northern California and cut across the southwest corner of Oregon. The track hit the Idaho border 70-80 miles north of Nevada. From there, travelers might head northeast over the high ground to drop onto the Snake River plain and then on into Boise. Traffic for Silver City turned east and then southeast. Before the Skinner Road, essentially random paths led up to the mining camps.

Skinner and his partners actually obtained two franchises, applicable to the two tracks into the high mountains. They made some improvements to the Reynolds Creek road, and even purchased an existing toll road to complete their holdings in that direction. However, that north-facing route suffered badly from winter storms.

To connect with the California traffic, Skinner’s workmen hacked a new road down the Jordan Creek ravine to Wagontown, near the base of the main grade. From there, the Creek wanders south for 10-15 miles before turning back to the north. Skinner basically shortcut across the loop to rejoin the Creek further west. Once they were out onto the more level terrain, builders encountered only one other place where they had to make a difficult cut with pick and shovel.

Freight wagons near Silver City. Commercial Directory.

Their route was not only shorter, it was better protected against weather from the north. The Owyhee Avalanche announcement on the 19th said, “The Ruby City and Jordan Valley toll-road is now in good order for teams, empty or loaded. … It is built on the north side of the creek, thus giving it the full benefit of the sun to keep it dry.”

The toll road made money for Skinner and his partners right from the start. Its presence also encouraged settlement in the lower plains along the Idaho-Oregon border. Over time, Skinner diversified his holdings, selling off parts of his road franchise. By 1878, Owyhee County had purchased all the Idaho portions and opened them as public roads.
                                                                                 

References: Mike Hanley, with Ellis Lucia, Owyhee Trails: The West's Forgotten Corner, Caxton Printers, CaIdwell, Idaho (1973).

A Historical, Descriptive and Commercial Directory of Owyhee County, Idaho, Owyhee Avalanche Press (January 1898).

Stacy Peterson, “Silas Skinner’s Owyhee Toll road,” Idaho Yesterdays, Idaho State Historical Society (Spring 1966).

David L. Shirk, Martin F. Schimdt (ed.), The Cattle Drives of David Shirk, Champoeg Press, Portland, Oregon (1956).

“The Skinner Road,” Reference Series No. 427, Idaho State Historical Society (May 1966).

Jordan Creek Discoveries: 150 Years Ago Today

It so happens that today’s sesquicentennial blog is identical to my regular “On This Day” item: For May 18, 1863.

This Sesquicentennial “On This Day” feature has turned out to be very interesting … and I’ve found quite a bit more material than I initially expected. So, in parallel with doing the blog, I am also in the process of compiling them – with some expansion – into book form. My working title is Idaho: Year One – A Chronology of Idaho’s First Year as a Territory. If all goes well, I should have the book ready for publication by the end of summer (but we’ll see).

Prospectors Discover Gold in the Owyhee Mountains [otd 05/18]

O.H. Purdy. Commercial Directory.

On May 18, 1863, a band of twenty-nine men broke camp and marched south and west from Reynolds Creek over a regional divide.

Early that month, the group had set out from Placerville, in the Boise Basin. They were chasing rumors that Oregon Trail emigrants in the Forties had observed gold signs in southwest Idaho. After crossing the Snake River, they followed along it to the mouth of Reynolds Creek (which they named) and turned into the mountains.

According to the account given later by party member Oliver Hazard Purdy, scouts had observed “what appeared to be a large stream, judging from the topographical formation of the mountains, which were well timbered.”

Purdy, born west of Rochester, New York, had been a Forty-Niner in California at the age of twenty-five.  After several years of indifferent success there, he taught school in Oregon. In 1863, he follow the rush to the Boise Basin, where he joined the Reynolds Creek band.

The explorers picked their way south through rough country and over a succession of small streams. Finally, about 4 o’clock, they curved eastward into the broad base of a canyon that narrowed as it cut deeper into the high country. Leaders decided the shallow bowl at the mouth of the canyon offered a better camping spot than anything they might find further up.

Most of the men began to unpack their mules. One man, however, saw some likely-looking gravel and scooped a batch into his gold pan. Excitement exploded when his pan showed something like a hundred “colors.” Everyone dropped what they were doing and spread out along what they called “Discovery Bar.”

Further prospecting along Jordan Creek, named for one of their party, confirmed that they had found more than an isolated pocket. Their finds set off a major stampede into Idaho’s Owyhee Mountains. A letter-writer in Placerville commented (Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, July 17, 1863), "The rush this spring to the Boise mines was frantic … But violently as it raged, it was but a small matter compared to the rush from Boise to Owyhee."

By mid-summer, hopeful miners had scattered all over the area, and two rough towns had already sprung into being. One of them, Ruby City, almost immediately became the county seat for Owyhee County. Then, before the end of the year, entrepreneurs founded Silver City.

Early Silver City. H. T. French photo.

They called it that because prospectors discovered that the real wealth of the Owyhees was not gold. It was silver, with lodes said to be richer than any others known except the best of those around Virginia City, Nevada. Silver City grew rapidly and supplanted Ruby City as the county seat less than four years later.

The presence of so many miners quickly sparked a vibrant stock-raising industry in the area. Michael Jordan, for whom the creek was named, started one of the first ranches. He was, unfortunately, killed by Indians in 1864. (O. H. Purdy was also killed by Indians, in 1878.) When the mining furor died down, cattle and sheep ranching became the life-blood of the Owyhees.
                                                                                 

References: [French], [Illust-State]

A Historical, Descriptive and Commercial Directory of Owyhee County, Idaho, Owyhee Avalanche Press (January 1898).

“The Owyhee country,” Reference Series No. 200, Idaho State Historical Society.

Second Major Fire Devastates Idaho City [otd 05/17]

The Illustrated History (published 1899) observed, “The second great fire of Idaho City, on the 17th of May, 1867, did not spare St. Joseph's as the first had done.”

The statement referred to the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, which survived a fire that devastated Idaho city in 1865. Fathers Toussaint Mesplie and A. Z. Poulin had been sent by the Roman Catholic Archbishop in Portland to establish a presence in the mining camps. Originally from France, Mesplie had spent years as a missionary among the Indians of Oregon. The Canadian-born Poulin had been associated with the Diocese of Montreal before being sent to the West.

Gold miners with riffle box. Library of Congress.

The Fathers had arrived less than nine months after prospectors established the first mining camp in the Boise Basin. Workmen started construction of the church during the summer of 1863.

The Fathers actually built four churches in the Basin that summer and fall, St. Joseph’s being the first and the largest. Builders had the structures ready by Christmas, 1863. Father Poulin led Christmas masses in Idaho City while Father Mesplie hurried between the smaller churches in three other towns. There were no Protestant churches in the Basin at the time, so, according to newspaper accounts, the Catholic services “were filled to overflowing.”

The following spring, an Idaho City merchant and (apparently) part-time minister erected a Methodist church down the street from St. Joseph’s. The fire in 1865 torched that church and most of the town, but ad hoc firemen saved the Catholic church, a popular theater, and a few other structures. News reports said that people in Boise City could see the huge column of smoke from the fire.

The fire had started, reportedly, in a “hurdy-gurdy” house, which – in the American West, at least – featured girls who would dance with the patrons for a small fee. Accusations of arson flew about, but nothing came of that. Looting, however, was rampant. For years, prospectors continued to find stashes of stolen goods believed to have been hidden away after the fire.

Early histories gave no source for the 1867 fire, which destroyed the major part of Idaho City. Driven by stiff winds, the flames consumed hundreds of the town’s wood frame structures, at least half of which housed businesses of various kinds. H.T. French noted that every hotel in town was burned to the ground. Yet the flames again spared the Jenny Lind Theater and the offices of the Idaho World newspaper.

St. Joseph’s church, Idaho City. Library of Congress.

In 1867, the Boise Basin placer mines were still highly productive. Owners who had managed to save part of their inventory were soon back in business. Locals also quickly rebuilt St. Joseph’s. A couple months after the fire, the Idaho World reported,  “It is not quite completed, but it already presents the finest appearance of any building in the city … ”

A few months later, newcomers might not even have known that the town had suffered through a big fire. Several structures build after this second fire are still in use today, including St. Joseph’s church.

Idaho City experienced another fire the following year, but the damage was not nearly so great.
                                                                                 

References: [French], [Illust-State]

Hubert Howe Bancroft, Frances Fuller Victor, History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana: 1845-1889, The History Company, San Francisco (1890).

Arthur A. Hart, Basin of Gold: Life in Boise Basin, 1862-1890, Idaho City Historical Foundation (© 1986, Fourth printing 2002).

Divisions Among the Nez Percés Will Complicate Treaty Negotiations

The correspondent for The Oregonian penned another letter from Lapai on May 16, 1863. This was a follow-up to his report of four days earlier. He wrote, “Since my last there has been two or three talks with the Chiefs.  It was arranged that ‘Lawyer’ should have all his tribe in here by Monday next, and that the Council should commence then.”

He then named several other prominent chiefs and went on, “There seems to be great animosity existing between the bands of ‘Lawyer’ and ‘Big Thunder,’ so much so that they hate each other as much as they do the Blackfeet, and until this difference is reconciled, the chances of making a successful treaty seems very slim.”

While the correspondent perhaps over-stated the level of animosity, he had correctly noted the division among tribal leaders. By and large, the split was between the Christianized, more-settled bands along the Clearwater River, and those that still followed traditional ways.

The writer next said that the negotiators were waiting for a preferred interpreter to arrive. Thus, “the Council will be necessarily deferred until near the latter end of next week; in the meantime the Indians are collecting on the council grounds in great numbers.”

Chief Lawyer ca 1861.
University of Washington Special Collections.

Government representatives had agreed to provide rations to sustain the bands while they waited. The reporter said that, with so much valuable land involved, a treaty might be expensive for the government. But, he observed, “this is a mere trifle, compared to the magnitude of the interests involved, to say nothing of the cost of an Indian war, which is a certain consequence in the case of a failure to make a treaty.”

References: Jerome A. Greene, Nez Perce Summer, 1877: The U.S. Army and the Nee-Me-Poos Crisis, Montana Historical Society Press: Helena (2000).
“Items from the North,” Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, California (May 29, 1863).

Snake River Steamboat Shoshone Makes Trial Run [otd 05/16]

On May 16, 1866, the stern-wheel steamboat Shoshone made its first trial run on the Snake River. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company had built the vessel in a rough temporary shipyard near the confluence of the Boise and Snake rivers.

Shoshone look-alike.* Oregon Historical Society.

Unfortunately, Idaho at that time had virtually no manufacturing infrastructure. Every piece of machinery – boilers, engines, and so forth – had to be hauled from Oregon by freight wagon over the Blue Mountains. Their “shipyard” had no foundry, so a blacksmith hammered out all the small metalwork on a hand forge.

To make matters worse, there was no sawmill near the construction site. Loads of pine planks, whipsawed by hand, had to be dragged out of the mountains. Work began in October 1865, but poor roads and bad weather caused long delays. Records suggest that all the delays and the freight charges tripled the final cost of the steamer. But finally, in May, the Shoshone floated on the waters of the Snake.

The Company intended to haul freight upstream from Olds’ Ferry, where the wagon road dropped out of the Oregon mountains to the Snake. (It’s also just above the constriction into Hells Canyon.) The Shoshone could carry the equivalent of 60 or more wagon loads, and save weeks getting freight to its most distant planned destinations. It seemed like a can’t-miss investment.

About a week after the trial run (May 24, 1866), the company ran an advertisement in the Idaho Statesman: “Steamboat Navigation on Snake River – the new steamer Shoshone … We can transport from 100,000 to 300,000 pounds per trip.”

However, the project experienced unexpectedly high expenses: costly labor to transfer goods on and off the ship, huge charges to procure firewood, and high maintenance costs.

Despite steady losses, the Company pursued its scheme for about three years. Then the directors decided to transfer the Shoshone to the lower Snake and Columbia. The captain they assigned to run Hells Canyon in 1869 walked away when he saw the first really big whitewater, Copper Ledge Falls (now covered by a man-made lake).

Wild Sheep rapids, a Class-V during spring run-off:
mishaps are life-threatening. National Park Service.

The captain who arrived the following spring repaired some weather damage, reinforced the forward hull, and shot the falls. The boat made it, although part of the prow broke away. After temporary repairs, the sternwheeler continued through some of the most challenging whitewater on the planet.

The sternwheeler’s arrival at Lewiston created a sensation. Their bow debris had preceded them downstream and convinced observers that the Shoshone was no more. From there, the ship chugged downstream to The Dalles, where workers made more permanent repairs.

After about three years on the upper Columbia River, the company transferred the ship to the lower river and sold her. Still unlucky, in late 1874, the Shoshone hit a rock and sank in the Willamette River. The new owners salvaged her machinery, but let a farmer have the hull for a crude barn.

*The Tenino: Columbia-Snake river sternwheeler, same length as the Shoshone, 25 vs 27-ft wide, a foot greater draft, comparable twin-engine (steam) design.
                                                                                 

References: [Hawley], [Illust-State]

Darcy Williamson, River Tales of Idaho, The Caxton Printers, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho (1997).

Improved Weather Allows Mining to Begin Around Florence

On May 15, 1863, the owner of a claim near Florence wrote to a friend in Lewiston and said, “We are having excellent weather now, and, the snow is rapidly disappearing. We expect to commence sluicing tomorrow.”

This was a turnaround from the previous month [sesquicentennial blog, April 16], when the snow was three feet deep. Then, continued cold weather had produced little run-off, so there was no water for placer mining. That had not, however, kept prospectors from searching for new, rich ground. Some of those men had been successful, and had just been waiting for a chance to start.

According to the letter writer, that time had finally come: “Miners around Florence are beginning active operations, and in a short time few can complain of hindrance from snow. Present indications are that our claims will pay much better than they did last season.”

Reference: “Letter from Idaho Territory,” Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, California (June 6, 1863).