Challis: Supply Depot of the Salmon River Mines
Idaho
Challis was born to serve the mines. When gold was discovered west of here in the eighteen seventies, prospectors flooded the Salmon River country and needed somewhere to buy flour, nails, and whiskey. A.
P. Challis, who surveyed the townsite, laid out a supply depot in the late eighteen seventies, and the town that took his name quickly became the seat of Custer County. Silver finds compounded the gold rush, and the surrounding hills produced ghost towns with names like Custer, Bonanza, and Bayhorse.
When the ore ran thin, ranching took over, giving Challis the durable economic foundation the mines never offered. Today it sits inside the vast Salmon-Challis National Forest, a quiet county seat in a canyon of the Salmon River, with an old gold dredge on the Yankee Fork still visible up the road.
