Riggins: From Gouge Eye to Whitewater Capital

The settlement at the confluence of the Little Salmon and the main Salmon River had one of the more colorful original names in Idaho history. Miners called it Gouge Eye, after a particularly vicious saloon brawl. Postal officials were less charmed, and the place was eventually renamed for the Riggins family, local postmasters and mail carriers.

Riggins sits between two of the deepest river gorges in North America, and the Salmon River here is the longest free-flowing river entirely within the lower forty-eight states. For decades the economy ran on mining and logging. In the nineteen eighties, a fire gutted the main timber mill and the industry never came back.

What replaced it was the river itself. Riggins became a base for whitewater rafting and kayaking on the Salmon and for steelhead fishing in the fall. The gorge that once trapped miners in a remote canyon now draws people from across the country to run its rapids.

Riggins is also a time zone line. It is the northwesternmost town in the Mountain time zone along United States Highway Ninety-Five, and Pacific time begins just north of town, across the Salmon River. The Seven Devils Mountains and Hells Canyon National Recreation Area lie a few miles southwest, and only about three hundred seventy-two people lived here in twenty twenty. Visitors can even pan for gold in the river gravel.