Oro Fino City

A packer who came in about July 20, 1861, remembered a bigger town than the sign's first weeks: some 1,200 people, about four hundred houses and tents by August, eighteen or twenty saloons, and no lawyers. James Watt recalled lumber whipsawed by hand and selling at up to $1.25 a foot, and claims on Oro Fino Flat paying six to ten dollars a day while Rhodes Creek paid twenty to sixty. When word came that fall of the Salmon River strikes, the camp nearly emptied at once; even Bill Rhodes left his claims.

What the plaque says

Oro Fino City Commercial center of Idaho's earliest mining district in the great days of 1861, it flourished here for more than a year. Pierce City was only 2 miles away but another town sprang up near some rich gold strikes. In its first few weeks, Oro Fino City had "about sixty houses--more going up every day; nine or ten stores, more saloons than are needed, two smith-shops, two butcher-shops, three families and about five hundred inhabitants,"----But with the gold rush over, the place was abandoned. The deserted town burned to the ground August 10, 1867. 156 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Weippe Prairie — 11 mi
  Where the Nimiipuu decided what to do with Clark's starving men, and fed them camas until they were sick.
• Heart of the Monster — 21 mi
  Where the Nimiipuu say their story begins: Coyote, a monster, and the heart he tore loose, still on the Clearwater's bank.

More markers nearby

• Chinese Hanging — 1.0 mi
• Pierce Courthouse — 1.0 mi
• Canal Gulch — 1.0 mi
• Lewis and Clark — 10 mi