Custer Motorway - Challis, ID

Challis, Idaho
Round Valley RV Park



Today we will be driving the famous Custer Motorway Drive.  It's 98 miles and mostly on dirt roads.  On the way we stopped in to the Challis Farmers Market.  Not too much going on this late in the season, but we did grab a few baked goods for the drive.

 

We took a side trip to the top of a pointy ridge for a geocache and a great view below.

All that is left of Tollgate Station.  A fee was charged coming from this direction to cross over the pass.

Suddenly you come around the bend to a barren area where the last fire really wiped out the pines.

We took a break at Homestead Station so Hurley could stretch his legs and we could eat our cookies.

 

 

11 Mile Barn was a stop to water and rest the horses.  You could also get fresh horses to continue on.

 

Love the turquoise color of this pond.

I love the old cemeteries but, not much here to read about who is buried here.

Old mining building.

The old mining town of Custer City.

 

All were boarded up so we were left wondering if it was because the summer season was over.  We didn't have time to ask the rangers back in Challis about it.  We were under the impression from the movie at the Visitor Center that you could walk through them.  They didn't mention anything about them being closed up for the season though.

Always love seeing the old machines used for mining.

The scenery was just stunning.  I think as much as we like ghost towns, we enjoyed the drive and the fall color more than the towns themselves.

The gold dredge we found fascinating though.  The idea that as huge as it is it "floats" down the river.

The buckets.

Bonanza City didn't have much left building wise, but a drive back into one of the backroads brought you to a much larger cemetery and Boot Hill.

We took a hike up here to get a view of below.  Still a bit smokey.

On the way out we passed someone's personal dredge.  There are a lot of these on the smaller creeks.

— correction (2/2021)

One of my readers pointed out this mistake. It is not a dredge, it’s a rotary screw trap. From the internet:

It’s an essential tool for salmonid lifecycle monitoring throughout the western United States. FISHBIO professionals have operated rotary screw traps to assess downstream migration timing and abundance of juvenile salmon and steelhead for more than 20 years. Data from these traps can help track changes in fish abundance in response to reservoir operations, river flow, and other environmental conditions.

—Thank you for pointing it out to me!

Below is what's left of an old dam.

When we walked down to the river there was a heart outlined in rocks under a tree.

Since we see so many of these cattle chutes everywhere we go, we decided to hide a geocache here.  We co-own one in Arizona and have added one in California too.  We're thinking of making it a series once we get some more in each state we visit.

It was a very long day and while we had a great time we were glad to get back and rest up.  We have more ghost town to see before saying goodbye to Challis, Idaho and moving north towards Missoula, MT.