top of page
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
Search

Boom Times in Bayhorse

Ian

It was early morning as the sun shot rays over the mountains ahead. I was meandering down a snow-blanketed road in my truck camper like a giant white turtle in a sea of snow to check out the ghost town of Bayhorse. I'd come from Challis the day before after I'd gotten there via a frozen dirt road pass in central Idaho. A storm had rolled in, forcing me to trek through half the night with tire chains. Luckily, the storm had been tamer in this area to the south, so the going was a bit easier.


Stepping out of the truck, all was still, and not a single other person was around that morning. Bayhorse sat quietly on the hillside opposite me, looming like a silent holiday village in a snow globe long forgotten. The snow was smooth and fresh, obscuring some of the age of the dwellings, making it seem even more perfect.


Main Street Bayhorse
Main Street Bayhorse

The area around Bayhorse had been explored by prospectors as early as 1864, and a miner who lost his bay horse and wandered up the canyon near the site gave the town its name, or so the story goes. Mining didn't actually begin until years later, in 1877, when the Ramshorn Mine was founded in the same canyon right above town. Other mines were established that year near Clayton, leading to the formation of a mining district. In 1880, a water-powered smelter and sawmill were installed in the area, leading to the founding of the actual town of Bayhorse. That summer, many industrial improvements and town buildings were constructed, including a dozen houses. By fall, over 75 residents had settled there. The Ramshorn Mine became one of the first large employers in the region, as it sat upon one of the best veins in the area. It was described as potentially the "longest continuous quartz lode ever discovered."


At first, the mine shipped its ore all the way to Salt Lake City and still turned a profit, but this practice ended in 1880 with the installation of the new smelter. However, the smelter also brought something else—plenty of competition from other miners eager to strike it rich, such as those at the Skylark and Beardsley Mines. Soon enough, Bayhorse was booming. Initially, the smelter was supplied with coke fuel from Pennsylvania, but this changed in 1882 when charcoal kilns were built down the canyon. This led to further growth, as it required 48 men just to keep the kilns producing enough charcoal to fuel the smelter. According to Victoria Marshall from the University of Idaho, over two tons of lead bullion were produced per day in the early 1880s, thanks to the high-grade ore being processed. With all these factors in play, Bayhorse continued to grow steadily.


Walking up the hill towards Ramshorn Mill, I couldn't help but notice how massive it was—stretching skyward in multiple tiers, like a staircase for titans. I'd seen other large mill buildings still standing, like the one in Comet, Montana, but none allowed visitors this close. I wanted to go in, but all the doors were thoroughly blocked off, warning people to keep out due to heavy metal contamination. Still, I tried to peer in the broken windows, hoping to glimpse the interior.


Ramshorn Mill
Ramshorn Mill

Old mill buildings fascinate me because they were at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, testing new machinery in new combinations to achieve what once seemed impossible. Those that still stand, like the Ramshorn, are testaments to the ingenuity and craftsmanship of their builders—antique bastions of civilization in the wild. Across all those open miles, massive cast-iron parts were forged, transported, and assembled before being powered up. Many of the mill structures from the Wild West mining days are now gone—some left to decay, others repurposed. These remote industrial powerhouses, once vital, now barely merit a footnote in history.


Continuing around the front of the mill, I found a smaller office-like building. Unfortunately, its windows were shattered, and its interior was strewn with trash—both new and old—including some ancient-looking mattress springs. Looking up at the mill from that vantage point west of town, I noticed the mottled hillside behind it, full of what looked like caves. They sat high above the town, hundreds of feet up—barely reachable by a human—but still, they made me ponder. Was a mountain lion at that moment looking down from his winter lair? Or had some giddy prospector once struck gold there, only to die before he could return for his riches? I wanted to know, but I wasn’t about to hike up and find out in the dead of winter.


The "Wells Fargo" building
The "Wells Fargo" building

Hiking back toward the center of town, I stopped in front of the Wells Fargo building and saw immediately why it was the best-preserved structure in Bayhorse. The stone walls remained completely solid, their hand-cut bricks standing firm. Unlike many stone buildings in the West, which are rough-hewn, these stones had been shaped precisely, with tight mortar joints that had aged surprisingly well. The doors stood straight, shut tightly, their contents hidden from the world. In 1885, a refinery was built here, allowing silver bars to be made on-site from locally mined ore. Those silver bars were likely the reason the building was constructed with such care—to guard against thieves, ensuring its security for over a century.


Further down the street to the east, the buildings were in rougher shape. A small green cabin stood alongside a stone cellar, and beyond that, a false-fronted, two-story building backed up against the hillside. The way it nestled into the slope made me wonder—how deep did its cellar go? Had any of its former owners ever tried mining straight into the hill? I had seen similar things in Helena, Montana, where homes had been built around active mines. The false-fronted building appeared sturdy at first glance, but support beams had been propped up at 45-degree angles to prevent collapse on the far side.


Classic false-front western architecture demonstrated here at this store
Classic false-front western architecture demonstrated here at this store

By 1885, Bayhorse had become a bustling place, with over 300 residents and an array of commercial conveniences. At the top of that list in a mining town was a saloon, and Bayhorse was no different, with at least five establishments taking on the role. According to the National Register of Historic Places, there were also three stores, a restaurant, a hotel, and a butcher to serve residents. By the looks of it, the building in front of me was possibly the last commercial establishment made of timber standing in the town. I like to think that it used to be a bustling saloon open at all hours, a raucous symphony of wild people in wild times blowing off some steam after a hard day's work.


Continuing down the path, I spied a collapsed structure next to the building above that almost looked like a small cabin made of tarnished metal shingles. Across from that, there was a two-story cabin in slightly better shape, with a screened-in porch on the front, screens flapping about on the breeze. The roof looked fairly new and had likely been replaced recently. Though Bayhorse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places nearly half a century ago in 1976, it was privately owned until 2006, and the owners likely weren't too interested in preservation of the town. Now that the town has been owned by the state for decades, hopefully they've formulated a plan to properly restore the rest of the buildings still standing.


A collapsed barn with a tin roof on the edge of town, settling back into the earth
A collapsed barn with a tin roof on the edge of town, settling back into the earth

The cabin with its new roof gave me hope that the building was slated to be used in the future at least, for a summertime shelter of some sort perhaps. I had seen other ghost towns like Garnet and Bannock in Montana that have been remarkably authentically preserved so that people can learn about how these people lived, those who braved the frontier and all its dangers for the hope of a better life for them and their own.


Other buildings lay around behind the protective fencing that had been put up. Some had numbers, likely for guides to explain what they were, though I haven't been able to find a key to them on the internet. Seeing those piles of rubble that were once structures made me think long and hard about preservation of our history and how many of us care about it. Yes, there are plenty of other problems to be solved today, but our history also provides a roadmap of mistakes made in the past and lessons people learned from them.


An Old Bayhorse Barn
An Old Bayhorse Barn

Bayhorse continued to grow for a few more years, topping out at around 400 residents in 1889. According to Mitchell, the high-grade ore had been mostly exhausted by 1885, and after that point, ore was shipped in from Ketchum to supplement output from the lower-grade ore that was now being mined in the Bayhorse area. On May 14th, 1889, a fire broke out in town that took out Sing Lee's wash house, Charles Small's mess house for teamsters, as well as a stage barn. The rest of the town was saved, but the blaze spelled the beginning of the end for the town.


In November of 1889, silver prices were falling, and tariff policy surrounding silver changed quickly. In the span of barely two weeks, one of the top silver boomtowns in the Idaho territory was nearly deserted and the smelter closed in Bayhorse. Over three hundred miners lost their jobs, and though the smelter would be fired up again briefly in the 1890s, the town had seen its heyday and would never return to its former glory. It's a familiar story in the West—boom towns rising and falling. Bayhorse was no different, except perhaps in the craftsmanship of the men who built Ramshorn Mill.


An old generator chassis from the early 20th century
An old generator chassis from the early 20th century

Satisfied that I had thoroughly explored the town and learned what I could from what was left behind, I cranked the starter on my truck and lumbered out of Beardsley Gulch with my camper and headed towards Challis. There, I took advantage of the rare cell service to gather intel for the road ahead. I would be rolling down the Custer Motorway, a backroads route from Challis to Sunbeam Idaho with historic stops all along its path. Most people tackle the route in summer, but I preferred solitude. I plunged back into the wilderness, chasing the snow to the peaks.








Sources:


Daly, Anna (January 31, 2024). "Inside this Idaho ghost town with buildings still standing today". BoiseDev. Boise, Idaho. Retrieved June 1, 2024.


Idaho State Historical Society . (n.d.). NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES . INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM - BAYHORSE. Idaho State Historical Society . https://history.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Bayhorse_76000671.pdf


Mitchell, V. E. (n.d.). (rep.). History of the Mines in the Bayhorse Area, Custer County, Idaho . Moscow , Idaho : University of Idaho .




Comments


IMG20220821183311.jpg

Howdy, thanks for dropping by! 

bottom of page