Bayhorse will look markedly different on your visit than it does in this book’s photographs, and that will be good news. For decades, Bayhorse was privately owned and off-limits to visitors. The best one could do was to gaze and photograph from across Bayhorse Creek, trying to get a good look through the trees and brush.
The Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, however, now owns the site, and in 2009 Bayhorse was opened to the public after an extensive clean-up of mine tailings, a slag dump, and even the town itself, which was poisoned with arsenic, among other dangerous materials. You cannot actually enter the buildings at this point because they are unsafe after, in some cases, more than a century of neglect. I was, nevertheless, given special permission to enter and photograph Bayhorse in 2007 after agreeing to obey several admonitions because of toxic, unsafe areas.
The most-repeated version of the naming of the mining district, the creek that runs through it, and the town that grew there is that a single prospector worked the area in about 1864 with the assistance of two bay horses. Other area prospectors couldn’t remember his name, so he was identified as “the fellow with the bay horses.”
Beginning in 1872, other prospectors working along Bay Horse Creek found promising silver deposits, but the real rush to the area didn’t occur until Tim Cooper and Charley Blackburn discovered their Ramshorn claim in 1878. They sold it to others for a rather modest price because they lacked the capital to develop a mine in such a remote location.
As other deposits were discovered, the mining camp of Bayhorse (likely shortened to one word by the U.S. Postal Service) grew on a flat area along the north side of the creek. By 1882, a stamp mill and a smelter were built immediately west of town. Coke to fuel the smelter was initially shipped all the way from Pennsylvania, but the completion of six charcoal kilns on the south side of the creek later that same year created a less expensive local supply of fuel.
In that same year, Bayhorse had about three hundred citizens and featured several saloons, boardinghouses, a meat market, and a general store. The peak years were the 1880s, but dropping silver prices, culminating in the Silver Crash of 1893, led to the town’s decline, despite limited mining efforts between 1902 and 1918. The post office managed to hang on until 1927.
WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND BAYHORSE
Now that the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation has completed its work on Bayhorse sufficiently to allow you to enter, you’ll be parking atop the old smelter’s slag dump, which has been capped because of hazardous materials beneath. You’ll be able to see, on the west end of town, the huge Bayhorse Mill, built in 1882 by John Gilmore and O. J. Salisbury. The stamp mill was remodeled in 1919 to become a flotation mill and plant.
The State of Idaho’s Department of Parks and Recreation is shoring up all the buildings at Bayhorse, including the enormous Bayhorse Mill.
East of the mill is the 1880s stone Wells Fargo building with its heavy iron doors, followed by several cabins and outbuildings, and the two-story 1880s Bayhorse Hotel, the only hotel remaining of several that once stood in town. Across from the hotel are the collapsed remains of the so-called tin can building, a log, false-front, tin-covered structure that probably served as a livery stable and perhaps later as a garage.
Farther down the street is a two-story residence that was built as a one-story log structure in about 1883. A second story was added in the late 1880s to serve as the home of Charles and Agnes Baker. Mrs. Baker worked in the Bayhorse Hotel, which at that time was owned by her mother. Her husband had served as a medical orderly during the Civil War, and, although he was not a licensed physician, he used the skills he had learned in the war to practice medicine in Bayhorse and nearby mining camps.
The charcoal kilns at Bayhorse were built using mortar from the tailings pile of the Bayhorse Mill.
The Baker House features an outdoor stairway to the second floor, indicating that it likely had boarders living above the family residence. Other wood, stone, and log remnants stand beyond the home.
On the south side of Bayhorse Creek are several other attractions, beginning with the six partially dismantled charcoal kilns (mislabeled on the topographic map as “coke ovens”), made of uncut stone and mortar. Beyond them are the ruins of a miner’s log cabin.
West of the kilns .1 of a mile, up to the left along the road, is the tiny Bayhorse Cemetery with eight dilapidated wooden fences for individual graves. There are no markers. One has the feeling, walking around the graveyard, that there are many unmarked graves.
Immediately beyond the cemetery is a large log structure, possibly the base of an ore hopper. You can also see, on the opposite side of the canyon, considerable mining remnants of Bayhorse: The canyon walls are crisscrossed with mining trails and pockmarks of failed adits.
About three miles above town, on four-wheel-drive-only roads, are the remains of the Ramshorn and Skylark mines.
WHEN YOU GO
From Challis, which is 60 miles southwest of Salmon, drive southeast on U.S. Highway 93 to Idaho Highway 75, a distance of 2.3 miles. At that junction stands the Land of the Yankee Fork Interpretive Center, which features highly worthwhile exhibits and artifacts, along with knowledgeable personnel. From the interpretive center, turn south on Highway 75 and proceed 7.9 miles to Bayhorse Creek Road (Forest Service Road 051). You will cross the Salmon River by bridge and travel 3.2 miles to the site of Bayhorse.