Galena Summit Overlook

Highway 75 climbs out of the Wood River Valley to Galena Summit at 8,701 feet, the divide between the Big Wood and the Salmon, and a little more than a mile past the top, on the Salmon side, it reaches the overlook. Below lies the upper Sawtooth Valley: the Salmon beginning as a creek in the meadows, the jagged wall of the Sawtooths to the west, and the White Clouds off to the east. From here the river runs north past Stanley and Challis, north again to Salmon, and then west across the state to the Snake, some 425 miles in all.

The view nearly came with a mine in it. In 1968 the American Smelting and Refining Company proposed an open-pit molybdenum mine at the foot of Castle Peak in the White Clouds, with a tailings pond at Frog Lake. The governor at the time defended it by saying the company was not going to tear down the mountains, only dig a hole. Cecil Andrus ran against him in 1970 on stopping it and won, and afterward called Castle Peak the mountain that elected a governor. In 1972 Senator Frank Church carried the bill through Congress that created the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, taking in the Sawtooths, the White Clouds and this valley, and withdrawing the ground around Castle Peak from mining.

The overlook opened in 1964 and in 2006 was renamed the Bethine and Frank Church Overlook, for the senator and his wife, who spent decades working for Idaho's wild country. His name is also on the largest wilderness in the state, the River of No Return country north of here.