A Labor Day Birthday - Happy Birthday Sheree

A few months ago Johnnie got a hold of me about going to Stanley for Sheree's birthday and as the weekend had approached I had almost forgot. I was super excited to spend some time with them in the Sawtooth's Johnnie had found a hotel on the river and we booked there as well. The weekend was to be full of food, friends, and fun and that it was! 

When we arrived on Saturday it was a bit cold. We all stayed inside and watched some football. Te weather was supposed to warm up on Sunday and that it did. Just enough for a nice little 5 mile hike. Tex and Tristan went to check out Red Fish Lake and Johnnie, Sheree, Paige and I hiked into Yellow Belly Lake from Pettit Lake. It was a beautiful day! When we got back it was time for dinner and then some fishing. Oh and did I mention a Whip and Nae Nae dance off?

Monday brought a day to an old ghost town called Custer City

Lode ores were found on the mountains surrounding Jordan Creek and the Yankee Fork in 1875.  The richest claim, the General George Custer, was named after General Custer who was killed the same year of the discovery, in 1876.  In 1879 lots were sold and the new town of Custer established.  It became the support center for the General Custer, Lucky Boy, and other mines in the area.
Businesses catering to the needs of the miners were soon springing up and lining the "one street town."  Chinatown was located at the southern end of Main Street.  By 1896 Custer had a population of 600.  Custer sported a school house, jail, Miners Union Hall, post office and a baseball team.  By 1903, the glory days of mining were slipping away as the mines played out one by one.  Business slumped and by 1910 Custer had become a ghost town.

The Challis National Forest took ownership of the area in 1960, and in 1981, Custer was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Through the efforts of the Friends of Custer Museum, (now The Land of the Yankee Fork Historical Association) the site was kept open for the public to enjoy.  In 1990 the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation joined the Forest Service and the Land of the Yankee Fork Historical Association in managing Custer.  Custer lies within The Land of the Yankee Fork State Park.
Custer now has numerous buildings from the mining era on display, a Museum in the old school house and the Empire Saloon is a gift shop with old fashioned sodas to refresh yourself after you’ve gone on a guided or self guided tour of the town.  You can listen to fun tales of the miners and some of the old residents of the town as you take a guided tour in the Museum.  The town is open Memorial Day Weekend through Labor Day for visitors to enjoy the interpretive history.  Plan on joining us the 2nd Saturday in July as we celebrate Custer Day with Old West Shootouts, Melodramas, Dutch Oven cooking, home made ice cream, and much more.

Yankee Fork Gold Dredge

The Yankee Fork Gold Dredge is located in the central mountains of Idaho on the Yankee Fork tributary of the Salmon River.  The Yankee Fork is close to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness area.  The nearest town, Stanley, is 22 miles from the dredge.

In 1939 the Silas Mason company out of New York was looking for a place to invest some money to help out the economy.  After doing some surveying they picked Yankee Fork valley as a place to do some dredging for gold.  It was estimated that there was 11 million dollars of gold to be had in the 5 1/2 mile claim.  They then contracted with Bucyrus Erie to build the dredge.  All the material came from Milwaukee by railway to the town of Mackay then loaded on trucks and made the difficult journey to construction site.  The pontoons and superstructure were built in Boise and trucked over Galena summit to this location.  Started on the 1st of April 1940 and finished on the 24th of August 1940.

The dredge is 988 tons, 112 ft long x 54 ft wide x 64 ft high and has a draft of 8 ft.  It has seventy-one (71) 8 cubic foot buckets; each one weighs a little over a ton.  The dredge is powered by two (2) Ingersoll-Rand diesel engines each producing 350 HP at that elevation.

The dredge ran from 1940 to 1952 stopping once from late 1942 until early 1946 for WWII and then again in 1947 when Snake River Mining Co (subsidiary of Silas Mason) decided they were not making enough money and put it up for sale.  In 1949 J.R. Simplot and a partner in mining, Fred Baumhoff, bought the dredge for $75,000 and started it up again in April of 1950.  In 1952 Simplot ran out of original claim so leased a small section from the Morrisons; when they completed that section they shut the dredge off and walked away.  Later in 1953 Morrison ask them to remove the dredge, or pay rent as the dredge still sat on Morrison's claim, and so Simplot's men started it up and dug themselves to the current position where it has sat ever since.

 Finally on our way home we stopped at a beautiful fishing hole where you could literally see the fish. There was a family here fishing that actually let Tristan real one in and then catch some of his own, Another fabulous weekend!

Hope it was a memorable one Sheree, it was for us!

Happy 41!