Beaver Dick's Ferry

No one is quite sure who Beaver Dick was. A traveler who crossed on the ferry's first trip in 1863 wrote that it had just been built by "an old mountaineer called Beaver Dick," who brought the boat over himself and was the first man the party met who had seen the Boise mines. The name usually goes to Richard Leigh, the English-born trapper later famous as a guide in the Tetons, who did run a ferry here; but Leigh was 32 that year, and the historian Rick Just has wondered whether it was a different Beaver Dick.

What the plaque says

Beaver Dick's Ferry In 1863 and 1864, overland packers hauling supplies from Salt Lake City to Idaho City crossed here and took a direct route northward to More's Creek. They cut a steep grade from the Oregon Trail down to Beaver Dick's Ferry, which served a crossing only a short distance below here. After gold rush excitement ended, Idaho City traffic came on through Boise and used a toll road further north to Boise Basin. 359 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Idaho Penitentiary — 4.7 mi
  A territorial prison that ran for 101 years on conditions that barely changed, and closed the year its prisoners burned it.
• Basque Block — 6.7 mi
  A merchant's 1864 brick house became the boardinghouse where herders from the Basque Country found beds, meals and their own language.
• Idaho State Capitol — 6.8 mi
  Walls hauled from the prison quarry, heat pumped from 3,000 feet down, and its newest rooms built underground.
• World Center for Birds of Prey — 8.2 mi
  The hilltop where the peregrine falcon was bred back from DDT, and where condors for the Grand Canyon country still hatch.

More markers nearby

• The Oregon Trail — steps away
• Diversion Dam — 0.9 mi
• Basque Country — 5.0 mi
• Oregon Trail — 5.1 mi