Idaho City

The sign leaves out half the later town. As the easy placers gave out and many white miners left, Chinese miners, nearly all from around Canton, bought and reworked the abandoned claims; the 1870 census counted 1,751 Chinese in Idaho City, about 45 percent of everyone there. The fires came in 1865, 1867, 1868 and 1871, and the first two, beginning on the night of May 18, 1865, destroyed more than 300 buildings; men with wet sacks on the roof saved the Catholic church the first time. By 1920 the census found 104 people.

What the plaque says

Idaho City This roaring metropolis was founded early in October, 1862, about ten weeks after gold was discovered in Boise Basin. By the next summer, this was the largest city in the Northwest, with 6,275 people--5,691 of them men! Families followed, and respectable businesses, schools, libraries, good theatres, churches, and fraternal orders came soon. The town survived several disastrous fires and remained an important mining center until the war shut down gold production in 1942. 186 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pon Yam House — 0.3 mi
  The store of Idaho City's king merchant, where the Chinese of the Boise Basin bought cuttlefish, incense and firecrackers.
• Old Idaho Penitentiary — 22 mi
  A territorial prison that ran for 101 years on conditions that barely changed, and closed the year its prisoners burned it.
• Kirkham Hot Springs — 23 mi
  Hot water pours off a ledge into pools at the edge of the South Fork Payette, a staircase down from the highway.
• Banks and the North Fork Payette — 23 mi
  Where the Payette's two forks meet, below fifteen miles of continuous Class V whitewater beside the highway.

More markers nearby

• Grimes' Creek — 8.8 mi
• The Old Toll Road — 16 mi
• More's Creek — 18 mi
• Arrowrock Dam — 18 mi