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The Historic Rogue River Ranch
A favorite stop on our Rogue River trips is to Rogue River Ranch, at the confluence of Mule Creek and the river. On most of our trips, we eat lunch at the ranch and spend several hours exploring and enjoying a swim in the deep holes of Mule Creek. Once a major Indian habitation site, the area has enjoyed a rich human history of over 9,000 years. When the Europeans arrived the site evolved into a small gold-mining community, with up to 100 residents trying to scratch a living from the gravel bars of the river. The ranch structures remaining today represent the center of the old Marial community, which had a trading post with upstairs lodging, a blacksmith's shop, and numerous outbuildings that filled the early residents' social and commercial needs.
The terraces on both sides of the mouth of Mule Creek (viewed from the ranch) were seasonal Indian camps for over 8,000 years. At the time of historic settlement several Native American groups used the Rogue River Canyon. These groups hunted and gathered for their living. Their main foods were fish, deer, acorns, and roots such as camas.
The two-story main house is now called the museum. The main house was built in 1903 by George Washington Billings. George operated a trading post, post office and boarding house here with his wife, Sarah Ann. The ranch was a popular gathering place with a barn known as the "Tabernacle" serving as a focal point. The ground floor of the tabernacle was used to stable horses and mules and the top floor was used for storage, dances, parties and Sunday worship services.
In 1931, George Billings sold the ranch for $5,000 to Stanley Anderson who expanded the house and added a caretaker house, bunkhouse, tack room, woodshed and storage shed. From southern California, the Andersons used the ranch as a recreational home site and invited many famous Hollywood actors and sports celebrities to
visit.
In 1970, the Anderson’s sold the ranch to the Bureau of Land Management under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Volunteer caretakers manage the site during the rafting season for the BLM. The ranch is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Construction of the Salmon River Road
The section of the Salmon River Road described here is west of North Fork, Idaho and is the route we take to the Main Salmon put-in and the road we travel from a Middle Fork take-out.
By 1933, there already was a rough, one-lane dirt road down the river as far as the village of Shoup, some forty miles below Salmon. Beyond Shoup, one boated, rode horseback, or walked through a narrow canyon of massive rock walls through which no road could be built without a large capital investment that was beyond the means of Lemhi County.
In the Spring of that year, the United States Congress approved Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legislation creating the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC had two purposes. First, to provide jobs to hundreds of thousands
of unemployed young men who were members of families that were on some form of relief. Second, the CCC would allow the Roosevelt administration to pursue conservation projects across the nation. Besides building roads the men worked on watershed management, erosion control, timber stand improvement, fire protection and the construction of administrative and recreational facilities.
A large part of the state of Idaho was federal forest and range land. Idaho Governor C. Ben Ross was quick to capitalize on this work project initiative and job creation scheme. Idaho eventually had 163 camps in all parts of the state with four of the camps of two hundred men each in the Salmon National Forest. Two thirds of the men were from out of state and had never been West before. Like today’s visitors they found Idaho’s mountains, rivers, and plains extraordinary.
One of the projects that Salmon locals and politicians lobbied for was the construction of the Salmon-Lewiston Highway. Lemhi County leaders and residents realized the economic boom of having a large federally funded project with hundreds of workers in the area. They wanted the Salmon River Road to be completed across the state.
A dissenter of the project was Elmer Keith, a Salmon outfitter and guide. He was a boatman with the legendary Captain Harry Guleke, who ran the Salmon in wooden scows from 1890 - 1939. Keith’s concerns were that miles of the road would have to be blasted through solid rock. Crews would have to confront the crookedness of the canyon, the heavy winter snowfall, and the constant threat of rock slides. When reading his letter to the editor you can feel the heart beat of a person who loved this river canyon and was aware that a road would bring dramatic change.
Keith writes, “Would it be worth much to Idaho, with all the big game and fishing gone? With the usual Idaho route, and the beautiful Salmon River canyon cluttered with gas and hot dog signs and rubbish heaps and car wrecks decorating the rocks? I think it is worth more to posterity just as it is than if it were opened up. Our state and federal treasuries surely do not need any such drain on them as a road down the Salmon would entail. I believe the sportsmen of Idaho and the US would prefer to have the beautiful Salmon River continue as the River of No Return."
Keith's opposition was overrun by the Salmon Recorder-Herald Editor Ralph Knepper and Guleke himself, who came out in favor of the road. The Salmon River road became the largest CCC project in the Salmon National Forest.
Inch by inch starting in 1933 the CCC crews built the Salmon River Road. The first step was the use of explosives to blast rock from above the Forest Service surveyed roadbed. To place the dynamite charges deep holes were drilled into the rock of the canyon walls high above the river. The air compressors for the drills were floated on scows. The drillers and jackhammer operators had to be able to climb the steep walls (sometimes as high as 60’) with the drills, jackhammers, and the air hoses that connected them to the compressor. Using a two inch drill bit the men jackhammered a cylindrical hole as much as 20’ deep to hold the powder. A hole that deep would hold three boxes of powder.
The CCC averaged 1/10th to 1/6th of a mile of new road per month from Shoup in 1933 to where the project terminated in 1941 just above Corn Creek. At this rate, it would have taken another 25 to 30 years to complete the Salmon River Road to Riggins.
World War II signaled the end of the CCC and the Salmon River Road project. We can only speculate how completion would have changed Idaho. The Main Salmon is 425 miles long, the longest undammed river in the lower 48. For most of its length a road does run along it. Once you reach Corn Creek the road comes to an abrupt end and doesn’t pick up again until Vinegar Creek, some 80 miles downstream.
Every time we launch a trip from Vinegar Creek. we marvel a the work of the CCC crews and reflect on the wisdom of Elmer Keith.
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