Explore Some Forgotten Ghost Towns Of Idaho With Us

The Doom of Bonanza

These Forgotten Ghost Towns of Idaho are in alphabetical order. Enjoy the history and videos.

Bonanza was inhabited from 1876 and became an established mining town in 1878. The mill near the mine made it necessary for a new town to be built, Custer, just a few miles further. The towns grew together, supported by the Lucky Boy, Black, and the General Custer Mines.

The town was bustling in its heyday with a school, boarding house, many shops and restaurants, a hotel, and several saloons. Even a toll road was built from Bonanza to Challis in 1879. No church was ever constructed, but there are two cemeteries—one serving the townsfolk, the second further up the hill. Boot Hill was going to be the new cemetery. But due to the circumstances of the three buried there, the people thought better of it and left Lizzie and her two husbands alone. In two grass fires, one in 1889 and the second in 1897, the population dwindled, and most miners moved to Custer.

The dangers of Custer

There are many fascinating places with a lot of history and artefacts leftover from the pioneers. Sometimes these places are well documented and visited, and other times, you may never know they exist.

During the mining booms of the late 1800s, towns and camps sprang up all over the west. Some lasted, some didn’t, but life was tough, as with all mining towns. Weather played a huge factor in the town of Custer; a lot of the residents died from avalanches.

Gilmore’s unexpected treasures

This old ghost mining town had many surprises in store for us. Established in the 1880s, mule teams hauled Gilmore’s silver to a smelter in the nearby town of Nicholia until the smelter burned to the ground.

Once the railroad came through in 1910, the ore was taken to Montana. Initially, the town was built higher up on the mountain and named Horseshoe Gulch, but a larger town was constructed at a lower elevation as the population grew.

In 1902, Jack T Gilmer named the town after himself, but when the Post Office Charter returned from Washington DC, they had misspelt it, calling the town Gilmore.

Gilmore’s peak population was around 600, but due to an explosion at the power plant in 1927, the mining operation decreased, and the last mine closed in 1929 – the same year as the Great Depression. The railroad stopped in 1939, and the post office closed in 1957, making the small town of Gilmore officially a ghost town.

The Helping Community of Leesburg

In 1866, a party of five men discovered gold in the area, and the camp of Leesburg grew quickly. Forty buildings were constructed in that year alone. Including five stores, three butchers, and a blacksmith. Five hundred miners made their homes in and around the townsite, and more people were arriving almost daily.

The winter months were harsh, and very little prospecting occurred, so the inhabitants kept busy building homes. It became a close-knit community with everybody helping each other and not the typical mining town with fights and drinking. In the first couple of years, the population boomed to several thousand and over 100 businesses were erected. By 1870, the population dwindled, and most miners moved to better prospects. Only the Chinese miners remained. Hydraulic mining started in 1926, and dragline mining began in 1939 but only lasted three years. Today, Leesburg is another ghost town in Idaho. The only remaining residence is unrecognisable and unmarked graves. There are just 17 known burials left. The Chinese remains were exhumed and taken back to their homeland.

Our Takeaway on the Ghost Towns of Idaho

There are many other ghost towns in Idaho to explore. In time we hope to reconnoitre as many as we can.