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Buffalo Hump
Scenic backcountry camping, fishing,
exploring, hiking and enjoying the scenery.
This is a very pristine area of high mountain lakes and alpine scenery. Old Gold Mines are abundant with a bountiful amount of history to research. A terrific drive if you are experienced in steep and rocky one lane roads and have a tough 4-wheel drive vehicle (this road has not been maintained for years as anything but a trail -take extra parts and toolbox). Take your tent and groceries, ATV or horses or have a local outfitter take you by horseback. This trail is a corridor into the Gospel Hump Wilderness.
Year Established:1978
Size:205,900 acres
http://www.idahohistory.net/Reference%20Series/0794.pdf
http://www.peakbagger.com/range.aspx?rid=14302
http://gesswhoto.com/idaho/town-outlines.html
http://www.usroots.com/~idhistry/idaho/thehump.html
Description:
Long before Lewis and Clark first laid their white eyes on this region in 1805, Nez Perce Indians were hunting the elk, deer and black bears whose four-legged descendants still live here with moose, mountain goats, bighorn sheep and mountain lions. Discovery of gold in the 1860s brought a flood of miners into central Idaho that never subsided until after the turn of the century. A briefer mining period occurred during the Great Depression, and remnants of old mining operations are still evident.
From Gospel Peak on the west, the area rises to a high point on Buffalo Hump
at 8,940 feet. The northern portion, south of the South Fork of the Clearwater
River, contains relatively gentle, heavily-forested country
that sweeps up the
glaciated divide between the South Fork and the lower Salmon River which flows
out of the nearby Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. From the divide,
the terrain becomes the steep and sparsely-vegetated Salmon River Breaks. In the
waters of Gospel Hump the fishing can be extremely good for resident and anadromous (those that return from the sea to spawn) fish.
Exposed to weather extremes, the temperature can reach 100 degrees F along the Salmon River while snow whitens the high country. Seasonal roads of fair to poor quality surround the Wilderness, giving you possible access to many miles of maintained and semi-maintained trails. Trails in the Breaks and into the high country are often impassable due to late snows and are considered extremely challenging my many hikers.
Submitted by Lyle Wirtanen, Director
The Historical Museum at St. Gertrude
During the last 100-plus years, the Buffalo Hump mining district has produced millions of dollars worth of gold. Mining claims dot the area even today and old timers still talk of finding the "mother lode" or that main vein of gold.
The following is from Pioneer Days in Idaho County, Vol. 1 (1978) by Sister Alfreda Elsensohn. Sister Alfreda was the founder of the museum. Her two-volume work is still considered the authoritative history of Idaho County.
It was not until the prosperous year of 1898 that any scenes of activity showed themselves in the Buffalo Hump district. Then the famous Buffalo Hump mines created an excitement which carried the county forward in population, production of wealth and general development at a faster rate than had been known since the days of placer mining.
In June, 1898, a prospector and miner, Charles F. Robbins, in company with George Mitchell, went in to Florence on a prospecting trip. In Florence, Robbins met another prospector named Bert Rigley. The two men, with Mitchell and a fourth mining man known as Perry Mallory, formed a party to go into the Meadow Creek country. There they located some placer property and worked the ground for a week. Not obtaining satisfactory results, they abandoned their claim and went to the Wind River country, where Robbins and Rigley did further assessment work. Mallory and Mitchell, in the meantime, returned to civilization. Rigley and Robbins resumed their prospecting and on the second day out, Aug. 7, 1898, they camped about 75 yards from the ledge of rock upon which the Big Buffalo claim was afterwards located. When camp had been made, Rigley started to hunt for deer. Returning about 6 o'clock, he passed over the big ledge. His attention was attracted by the character of the rock and he picked up a piece of quartz weighing about 40 pounds. Putting it under his arm, he went on to camp where that night it was put through the roasting process. The result was satisfactory, and the next day the two men laid claim to the Big Buffalo and Merrimac mines. On the 10th, the Ore Fino, a southern extension of the Merrimac, was staked out. The men worked on the various claims for the morning of the 8th to the evening of the 11th, leaving next day for Florence in order to secure a fresh supply of food. They told the story of their good fortune, and soon the news of the discovery spread to the outside world.
Buffalo Hump, the most prominent of the peaks of the Clearwater Mountains, rises in the center of a triangle formed by the three mining towns of Warren, Elk City, and Florence, mining camps which in the 60s [1860's] produced something over $100,000,000 in placer gold. This high mountain peak can be seen to the southeast of St. Gertrude's Monastery, snowcapped much of the year. Buffalo Hump takes its name from a prominent intrusive into the Idaho granite batholith rising to an elevation of 8,926 feet in the form of a recumbent buffalo and is a prominent landmark of the central Idaho region. It was so called by the early miners in 1862, either because of its resemblance to the hump of a buffalo, or because the Nez Perce called it "See-nimp," meaning "the buffalo hump."
The special Industrial Edition of the Grangeville Standard, issued in December, 1904, had this to say: "The Buffalo Hump discoveries were heralded by voice and pen as the most important ever uncovered in the world. Men mining the golden reefs of Transvaal in South Africa threw down their tools and started for Idaho. Gold quartz miners from the Malaysian peninsula and other distant lands crossed the Pacific. As a result of the discovery of Robbins and Rigley, the camp of Buffalo Hump in particular, and Robbins Mining district in general, have possibly enjoyed the greatest general advertisement ever accorded a single mining camp in the world. In German, in French, Spanish, and Italian, the transcontinental railways, the transatlantic steamship lines, and other transportation companies set forth in pamphlet and in map the golden opportunities to be encountered by either a residence or interest in what this class of literary effort was pleased to style the greatest gold camp on earth."