Freezeout Hill

The name has two stories: that teamsters locked, or froze, their wheels to slide down, or that a party of freighters in 1864 camped on top through a winter night rather than try the descent. Going up was worse; a loaded freight wagon could take twelve teams and more than a day. The vigilance committee's captain was William J. McConnell, a young melon and onion farmer who had lost a horse to the gang. He became governor and a United States senator. The state sign was dedicated here in 1966 before a crowd of about 500.

What the plaque says

Freezeout Hill In 1862 Tim Goodale opened an Oregon Trail cutoff which descended a steep ridge just west of here into the valley below. Later that year a gold rush to Boise Basin came up Payette Valley, and the next summer farmers along the river started raising crops to supply the mines. For a year or more they were troubled by a notorious band of horse thieves based at Pickett's Corral located at the head of the valley before you. Late in 1864 the farmers organized the Payette Vigilance Committee and drove out the Pickett Corral Gang. 295 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Idaho State Capitol — 21 mi
  Walls hauled from the prison quarry, heat pumped from 3,000 feet down, and its newest rooms built underground.
• Basque Block — 21 mi
  A merchant's 1864 brick house became the boardinghouse where herders from the Basque Country found beds, meals and their own language.
• Old Idaho Penitentiary — 23 mi
  A territorial prison that ran for 101 years on conditions that barely changed, and closed the year its prisoners burned it.
• Banks and the North Fork Payette — 24 mi
  Where the Payette's two forks meet, below fifteen miles of continuous Class V whitewater beside the highway.

More markers nearby

• Pearl — steps away
• Black Canyon Dam — 6.1 mi
• The Ward Massacre — 14 mi
• Horse Shoe Bend — 14 mi