New Meadows: Junction of Two High Desert Valleys
Near Mccall, Idaho
New Meadows sits at the junction of US Ninety-Five and Highway Fifty-Five in the Little Salmon River valley of west-central Idaho, where the main corridor north to Lewiston meets the road east toward McCall and the Payette Lakes. The town was founded in the early nineteen hundreds when the Pacific and Idaho Northern Railway extended into the valley, opening the surrounding forests and grasslands to logging and cattle ranching.
The Payette National Forest surrounds the area, and the valley floor sits at roughly three thousand nine hundred feet elevation, giving New Meadows a cooler climate than the lower Snake River Plain to the south. The town has fewer than six hundred residents. Its main historical claim is as a supply hub for the ranching and logging communities that spread through the Salmon River Mountains in the early twentieth century. The junction it occupies still guides travelers choosing between the Oregon coast and the Idaho backcountry.
