Ghost Towns of the Mountain West by Philip Varney

Author:Philip Varney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2010-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND SILVER CITY

As you enter town, a sign cautions you to respect that this is an occupied town of private buildings. On the reverse side of that sign is a map that most visitors don’t see until they’re on the way out. It shows principal streets and the location of the cemetery.

You will enter town on Jordan Street after crossing Jordan Creek. On the southwest corner of Jordan and Avalanche streets is the former Owyhee County Office Building, now a gift shop. Directly across the street is the Idaho Hotel, a rambling structure that is, simply, one of the finest ghost town buildings in the American West. The Idaho Hotel is actually an amalgam of seven different buildings, the oldest of which is the 1866 three-story west wing, which was disassembled and loaded onto skids and sleds and dragged through snow to Silver City from short-lived Ruby City. That town stood where the road now turns toward Jordan Valley a half-mile west of Silver City. Inside the hotel, open for both meals and overnight accommodations, are a saloon-dining area, a Wells Fargo office, an elegant parlor, and eighteen rooms for guests, including the luxurious Empire Room, where I enjoyed a night surrounded by the nineteenth century.

Behind the hotel and straddling Jordan Creek is the 1869 Masonic Hall, a two-story structure that was originally built as a planing mill.

If you walk south from the hotel’s porch, you’ll be on Avalanche Street, which features the aforementioned former county office building, the Knapp Drug Store, and, on the corner of Avalanche and Washington streets, the Lippincott Building, which contained a doctor’s office. More of the town’s enchanting buildings extend down Washington, including the former Odd Fellows Hall; the Getchell Drug Store and Post Office, which has a fully-equipped dentist’s office in the rear; and, across the street, the 1866 furniture store and vegetable market, which is a wooden building covered in pressed tin that has also served as a brewery and soda works (there’s a natural spring in the basement); a bowling alley; and the Sommercamp Saloon.

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