In early July, I stowed away with my parents as they traveled to Idaho to visit Strong Family West — and this time, instead of flying, we made it a road trip. Naturally, I took pictures.
Day 4 didn’t include anything that prompted me to pull out my camera, so you’ll never know what we did. Ha! Take that!
On Thursday we decided to enjoy a uniquely western feature: an Idaho ghost town named Silver City. Like most ghost towns, Silver City is as close to a main road as the Detroit Lions are to winning a Super Bowl, so the last 20 miles of our trip took 45 minutes because they were on a winding road that provided somewhat disconcerting views like this:
As a further reminder that we were nowhere near the laziness of suburbia, farther down the road we were confronted with this, a most comforting sign:
Despite the magically disappearing roads and sternly-worded warning signs, we did manage to traverse the mountain and make it to Silver City. Though it’s classified as a ghost town, Silver City isn’t devoid of life: it actually has a number of summer residents who live alongside the ghosts. It’s a well-known fact that ghosts are terrible at structural maintenance; however, since the summer residents aren’t ghosts, many of the buildings are properly maintained, so the town gives a persisting glimpse into history.
This building houses a small store whose profits support Silver City Fire & Rescue. Yes, even a ghost town has its own fire & rescue squad, and for good reason: in addition to the regular summer residents and their eminently flammable 150-year-old houses, Silver City sees a regular stream of tourists atop ATVs and dirt bikes during the summer. As we all know, where there are people, there can be injuries…and where there are people on ATVs and dirt bikes, there can be more injuries. SCF&R isn’t constantly busy, but when there’s a problem, its presence can make all the difference.
While I was browsing the SCF&R store, I was startled to see a familiar name on the wall:
She’s missing an L on the end of her name, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s close enough.
Hey, look! Another picture of my dad being a tourist!
On the left side of that picture you can see a rusty old car baking in the sun; that sort of scene can make for nice pictures, so I walked over to get a closer look.
It turned out to be an old Packard that’s seen better days; as you can see in the picture, the car — which I just now decided to name Percy, because everybody knows alliteration makes life better — is missing its front end. It’s obvious Percy Packard has been retired for a long, long time…but wait. What’s that bright blue spot on the back end?
Yes, that’s right: a rusted car that’s long been baking in the Idaho sun has a spotless license plate that expired in 1985. Somehow, that sort of bizarre time warp makes sense in a ghost town.
The large brown building in this picture is the Idaho Hotel. The hotel was established in 1863 and closed in 1942; however, it reopened thirty years later, and to this day it’s still a functioning hotel (though parts of it are still being restored). Staying in the Idaho Hotel is a bit like going back in time; there are showers and flush toilets, but since Silver City has no power, that’s the extent of the amenities the hotel offers. (If you’re curious, the hotel site has pictures of the rooms.)
See that tall skinny structure jutting out of the ground to the right of the house? That’s a two-story outhouse.
As the license plate shows, residents are proud to call Silver City home for a season. Many of the homes have been owned by the same family for multiple generations; we talked to one resident whose Silver City home has been in her family for six generations.
Silver City’s old cemetery is just outside town, and we decided to make a stop there before we headed back to Mountain Home.
Come back later for Day 7, when we go to prison. Seriously!
