Looping Through the Gold in the Hills around Challis, Idaho

We're camping at the Round Valley Campground in Challis, Idaho. We won't be surprised if you've never heard of this tiny town where you're more likely to see a deer than a person on the street by the church.

We have now passed a milestone for our summer travels. This is the first morning that we dressed in shorts and short sleeves all summer. After weeks in Canada and at high elevations, we've been wearing long pants all during July and August! The campground owners recommended that we take a drive on the Custer Motorway that starts at the town of Challis and heads toward gold country.

Did we mention that the motorway was a dirt road? Built in 1879, it was the latest in transportation to get supplies from Challis to the gold miners that were working in the towns of Custer and Bonanza more than 30 miles away. Wagons were charged a toll to take supplies and gold down this road through the foothills of the Sawtooth Mountains.

We drove for two hours through hills and forests, and met only two people on four-wheelers. When we asked the ranger station about hiking trails, we found that this area is more used by ATVs than hikers. Usually the two don't mix well on the same trail. This little-traveled road should have been a great place to see wildlife. But the only animals we saw were the occasional open range cattle.

We finally arrived at the town of Custer. This town grew up overnight when gold was discovered in these hills in 1877. Now a ghost town, several buildings are restored and open to explore. A museum and walking trail with signs that explain more about life in a gold mining town in the 1800s make this a historical stop.

The Custer cemetery is also open. The leading cause of death seemed to be snow slides and gun fights. It was a rough time to live in gold country.

Just a few miles down the road is a gold dredge. This big machine was built in the 1940s, and was used to recover the traces of gold that the miners missed.

It uses these large scoops to carry the soil from below, up through the dredge to sort for gold. How big do you think those scoops are?

Big enough to make a large recliner for a medium-sized wanderer.

We had a tour of the gold dredge, and now understand better how it worked. But we think the stories about the people that ran the machine are more interesting. Men moved here to run the gold dredge, and families were born. The picture below is of the "dredge camp kids" that were born and went to school in this valley in the 1940's because their fathers worked on the gold dredge we toured.

In the picture above, you can find the little boy sitting in the wagon with the sailor cap. His name is Billy Reed. Billy and his brothers were born in the 1940s, while their father worked on this dredge. Now Billy is retired and he was our tour guide. The picture below is of the rotating barrel that separates the big rocks from the tiny gold pieces. But you can also see Billy in the red shirt telling first-hand stories about life here 70 years ago.

After driving most of this 88-mile loop on gravel roads, we returned to the highway near the town of Sunbeam. We had been told about the Sunbeam hot springs, so we parked the car and walked down to the Salmon River just below the highway.

It's here that water from a hot spring is flowing down the hill where it mixes with the cold water of the river.

People have placed rocks, separating the water into individual pools. The closer the pools is to the hot springs water, the hotter it will be.

Choosing a pool right next to the Salmon River means that it will be cooler. When Mark moved the rocks that controlled the flow of water into the pool, we could feel immediate temperature changes of 10-20 degrees.

If you just want to cool off on this warm day, it is best to sit with no rocks impeding the flow of the cool Salmon River.

The Sunbeam hot springs is just one of the many natural hot springs in this area. This spring has been used for many years, as evidenced by the CCC-built bath house on the hill that has been there since the 1930s. We can also imagine the sore gold miners enjoying pools like this after a long day of digging for precious metal.

After soaking our legs in the hot springs, we were ready to continue our loop drive back towards our campground. We have found the treasures around Challis, Idaho, including the gold and the hot springs. We'll be leaving this area tomorrow . . . but only after we take a recommended hike that includes one more treasure.