Salmon River

The canyon gave the river its other name. For more than a century after outsiders first came, boats could go only one way: wooden scows, built to carry heavy loads through whitewater, floated down with the current and were taken apart and sold for lumber at the end of the run. Hence the River of No Return. Harry Guleke piloted scows down it for more than thirty years and took a National Geographic party through in 1935. Only with powerboats did anyone regularly travel back upstream.

What the plaque says

Salmon River A vast mountain wilderness, cut by the mile deep Salmon River canyon, stretches across Idaho south and east of here. Travel through the Salmon River mountains always was hard in the early days. An 1872 railway survey showed the Salmon River canyon to be too expensive a route to build. Until a highway was finished down White Bird hill in 1921, only some pack trails and a difficult wagon road crossed the rugged mountain barrier that separated north and south Idaho. 298 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• White Bird Battlefield — 4.3 mi
  Six Nimiipuu men rode out under a white flag. A shot came from the soldiers' side, and the Nez Perce War began.

More markers nearby

• Camas Prairie — 2.5 mi
• White Bird Grade — 3.6 mi
• Nez Perce War — 3.6 mi
• Mount Idaho — 8.7 mi