Owyhee County (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781531677480)

The sprawling high desert wilderness of southwestern Idaho was virtually unknown to whites in 1863, when Mike Jordan and a band of placer miners dipped their pans into the creek that bears his name and found gold. The electrifying news spread, and the people came. Towns sprang up overnight on the mountaintops. Some disappeared almost as quickly as they had appeared. "Men needed to work the mines " cried Idaho's newspapers. The word went out, and the miners came from Nevada, California, Colorado, and across the West. Soon the great mines of War Eagle Mountain rivaled Nevada's fabled Comstock Lode. With the exception of Silver City, one of America's largest intact ghost towns, the boomtowns, as well as the mines, are gone; however, descendants of the miners remain. Owyhee County is the size of Delaware and Connecticut combined--7,679 square miles--with a population of only 11,500. It is a rarely visited land of few roads and fewer people, sagebrush desert, deep basalt canyons, romantic vistas, and mysterious mountains that still hide their gold and silver.

Author: Robert L. Deen
ISBN-10: 1531677487
ISBN-13: 9781531677480
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Library Editions
Language: English
Published: 05/25/2015
Pages: 130
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 9.61h x 6.69w x 0.38d