There are two Ghost Towns located about 20 miles from Stanley. Bonanza City was the first gold mining town to raise up of the two in 1877 and by 1881 it had a population of 600. Fires in 1889 and 1897 gutted much of the town and most of them moved to Custer City which was only about 2 miles away. I was intrigued by Bonanza because my favorite TV show as a young girl was Bonanza. Now the ghost town has absolutely nothing to do with the TV show but I still wanted to go because of the name. All I needed was to see Little Joe ride up on his horse J Most of the buildings at Bonanza are in decay but several miles up a bumpy dirt road was the Bonanza Cemetery. We got out and walked among the headstones reading the names and dates of death. There were many Unknowns. A sign at the front of the cemetery gave the many names of those buried there. The thing that struck me was that most of them were under the age of 50 and many were children. What a hard lifebrutal winters, no medical attention, unable to readily
get supplies. The children died of typhoid, scarlet fever, meningitis, fever, etc. All this to find your fortune in gold Custer City was established 2 years after Bonanza and was named after General Custer. They had a stamp mill, Nevada Hotel, Miners Union Hall, Cathouse, Brewery and a Chinatown. These mines were finished around 1911. The US Forestry Dept maintains the town in the summer. Unfortunately the town was still boarded up and we were unable to tour the buildings. But it was still interesting. Met a woman who was mountain biking through the town and she said she was born in Lebanon OH but raised in Idaho. She told us that the town is busy after Memorial Day when they open up the buildings they even serve hand dipped ice cream out of one of the old buildings. The town came alive again in the early 1900s when a rich man J. R. Simplot purchased a huge floating dredge and dredged out the Yankee Fork River. It netted more than a million for Simplot but when you see the dredge makes you wonder what he paid for it. On our way down the gravel/dirt road we saw some semis
from the DNR loading fishlings into a pond. Evidently the Steelhead and Sockeye Salmon were on the endangered species list. If all those fish were steelhead and sockeye then I think you can take them off the endangered species list. When we went back by we stopped at the spot they loaded the fish. It was amazingI never ever saw so many fish and they were jumping out of the water!!! We stayed there for awhile watching them. We stopped at the Sunbeam Hot Springs. You could smell the sulfur as soon as you got out of the car. These hot springs emerge from the north bank of the Salmon River. The first tourists to visit were in 1824 when a fur trapping party stopped to soak the chill off. In 1937, the Conservation Corps built a bathhouse using the hot water from the spring and cooling it with water from the Salmon River. The Bathhouse is gone but a few buildings still remain. The hot springs gush endlessly from an opening just below the road. Rocks were formed to trap the hot water and allow some ice cold Salmon River water to flow in. Well there was not quite
enough Salmon River water and too much hot springit was HOT HOT HOT!!! I saw what happened to those two people in the hot spring in the movie Dantes PeakI was not walking in. Kevin got his feet in and quickly moved to the other side of the rocks on the Salmon River side and it was too cold. He was just like Goldilocks trying to find just the right spot. He finally found equal parts hot spring and Salmon River. The rest of the day was spent in national forest campground (not open for the season yet) fly fishing the Salmon River. It was just beautiful. Would be a wonderful place to camp for the night.
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