Ghost towns are a great way to remember the past. You can go to them and learn from them things that you may not have known about the early history of your state. Aside from being informational, you can also just visit ghost towns just for pleasure. I always remember as a kid driving with my family to Idaho City and Silver City on the weekends just to go for a ride there! It is always fun to go.

Here is a link to my favorite website about tons of different ghost towns in the West..

http://www.ghosttowngallery.com/

Silver City Idaho

Silver City Idaho is probably one of the best ghost towns in that it has many of its original buildings still standing giving visitors a great idea of what it was like during its years of full operation. Silver City is located just east of the Idaho Oregon border just in the Jordan Valley. Silver City had mines that were producing millions of dollars of ore during its operation. There was also a brewery and a bottling plant. About 1889 was when the town started its decline into a ghost town. At that time the city still had six general stores, two lumber yards, a newspaper, two hotels, and many doctors and lawyers. The towns down fall is said to have come from a murder there in town. A woman murdered her husband. It is told saying that this man added to the population above Slaughter House Gulch by his wife, the cemetery is located above Slaughter House Gulch. The Idaho Hotel that was in operation when the town was in full operation, is still existent and is available for guests still to come and stay in.

Idaho City Idaho

If you drive North on highway 21 through Boise and out of town, you drive straight into Idaho City. The areas outside of Idaho City gave more gold during the Gold Rush, even more than Alaska. The estimates are about 100 million dollars. Besides supplying all this gold, the city had very nice and elegant theatres for the people living there. They also had surreys that you could rent for Sunday afternoon rides around the town. Surreys are like a bike that have 4 seats in them. They would rent these and ride around for the afternoon. Idaho City also had many breweries. They actually had 4 breweries and 41 saloons. The very first Territorial Jail in Idaho was in Idaho City. It was made of rickety logs and planks. There wasn’t much room and it was lacking comfort and sanitation. Usually there was only one guard on duty and the prisoners would usually learn that they could over take him. The first Catholic church in Idaho was also in Idaho City. It still stands there today. Fires throughout the years have destroyed many of the original framed buildings. But there have been many of the buildings rebuilt with brick. It gives a great sense of what the town was like during its peak years. There are still occupants living in Idaho City.