Grimes' Creek

The discovery party was really three bands joined together under Splawn, D. H. Fogus and Grimes, and it was Fogus who found the first gold, on Boston Bar near later Centerville. A week later, on August 9, Grimes was shot from ambush. The men who carried the news back to Walla Walla blamed a Bannock or Shoshone, but the historian Merle Wells recorded a strong tradition in the Basin that no Native person had anything to do with it, and some have suspected his own companions. A monument stands at his grave on Grimes Pass.

What the plaque says

Grimes' Creek Named for George Grimes who, with Moses Splawn, led the party which on August 2, 1862 made the strike that started the Boise Basin gold rush. The party was searching for a rich basin described to Splawn a year earlier by an Indian. Farther up this creek, they found the gold they were looking for. A few days later, Grimes was killed at Grimes Pass (it was blamed on Indians) and his partners had to bury him in a prospect hole nearby. 188 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pon Yam House — 9.2 mi
  The store of Idaho City's king merchant, where the Chinese of the Boise Basin bought cuttlefish, incense and firecrackers.
• Old Idaho Penitentiary — 14 mi
  A territorial prison that ran for 101 years on conditions that barely changed, and closed the year its prisoners burned it.
• Idaho State Capitol — 14 mi
  Walls hauled from the prison quarry, heat pumped from 3,000 feet down, and its newest rooms built underground.
• Basque Block — 15 mi
  A merchant's 1864 brick house became the boardinghouse where herders from the Basque Country found beds, meals and their own language.

More markers nearby

• The Old Toll Road — 7.1 mi
• Idaho City — 8.8 mi
• More's Creek — 9.6 mi
• Arrowrock Dam — 9.6 mi