Sagebrush Pioneers Campout

The weekend of July 10'th we will be holding our very first Sagebrush Pioneers camp. We will be located up in the heart of Idaho near the old mining towns of Custer and Bonanza City. The weekend will be devoted to studying the life of the pioneers of that area. Also that weekend in the town of Custer is "Custer Days" which is an event that remembers the pioneers that first came in to this rough land.

Over this next month I will try to post info of the area so that those who come to the camp will have an idea of what happened in those early days of settlement. And don't forget to do some studying yourself.

This is from the book "Land of the Yankee Fork" by Esther Yarber.

Idaho- Within her bosom lies the land of the Yankee Fork. This is gold country. Some authorities say the highest grade ore ever to come out of the state came from here.

The name Yankee Fork derives from a turbulent stream which composes one of the larger tributaries of the Salmon River…

…Rich mineral deposits are laid down here, but because it sits high on the western slopes of the Rockies, deep secure within the southern reaches of the Salmon River Mountains, its winters are long and cruel.

Before the white man came to explore, Indians called it “The land of deep snows,” and never ventured up that way except in the summer months. The trappers, who came next, deemed it foolhardy to remain very long at one time. It was they who reported color in the sands of the Yankee Fork and its tributaries. Yet not until the gold fields elsewhere did the prospectors gather enough courage to search for minerals and brave the winters here.

It was in the Seventies, while Idaho was in her Middle years as a territory, that the first strikes were made. No road into the district was started until 1879, after the building of Bonanza City had begun, the townsite of Custer platted, and outside capital moved in.

After the road was completed and major mining and milling operations got under way, by the mid-Eighties the two towns, located two miles apart on the banks of the Yankee Fork, boasted a combined population of over 5,000 people. The district’s initial boom lasted eight years, followed by a five, then another boom which ended in 1910. These booms were followed by spurts of mining activity ever since.

Today Custer and Bonanza City are ghost towns, many of the mine shafts in the district are empty, and the mills in the vicinities are reduced to remnants and rubble. At the mouth of Jordan Creek, mid-way between the two towns, an old gold dredge of later day operations sits in one of the deep pits of its own making, semi-circled by huge piles of rock and gravel reported to have produced several million dollars in gold during its intermittent operations. More gold is said to be contained in the strembed of the Yankee Fork. But for that matter, it is said that the entire district continues to be an area of potential wealth.