TimManBlog

Salmon, Idaho — Birthplace of Sacajawea

July 31, 2023
(Photographs and memories from June 2012 and July 2020)
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Salmon, Idaho (or nearby) is the birthplace of Sacajawea, a famous Lemhi Shoshone member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806. The story of Sacajawea is well-known, so I won’t go into detail about it. See her Wikipedia entry here for more information on her life. (Note that I’ll use the spelling “Sacajawea” instead of its rivals “Sacagawea” or “Sakakawea” since Sacajawea is the spelling preferred by the Shoshone.)

Salmon, Idaho, is a busy town. Although the town’s population is only 3,000, it seems more active because all human activity in this remote part of Idaho must be squeezed through a narrow corridor of land below the goliath Sawtooth Mountains above the town and the rushing Salmon River that runs through it. The smaller Lemhi River joins the Salmon River just north of downtown.

Across the river from downtown Salmon, the 1909 Lemhi County Courthouse provides some stately grandeur to the small town. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Salmon is the county seat of Lemhi County, Idaho, one of the state’s most remote counties. Except for U.S. Highway 93 bisecting the county from north to south, only one other paved road allows automobile traffic into Lemhi County.

Ironically, the name “Lemhi” is not from the Shoshone language but was taken from the Book of Mormon and applied by a Mormon missionary settlement in the 1850s.

In July 2020, I decided to revisit Salmon. That was the summer of the pernicious Covid lockdowns, and I decided to escape Democrat-controlled Colorado for a place of more sanity, which I found here in Idaho. There were no lockdowns here, nor any other silliness fueled by the hysterics of the Covid crisis. It was indeed a “Freedom Voyage” at its best.

I arrived in Salmon from the southeast, following the footsteps of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Seeking the Continental Divide and a waterway to the Pacific Ocean, Meriwether Lewis ascended the 7,373-foot Lemhi Pass and crossed the Divide on August 12, 1805. The rest of the “Corps of Discovery” followed soon after.

Checking off one of my life’s bucket list items, on July 11, 2020, I followed Lewis and Clark’s footsteps. I reached Lemhi Pass (after diverting onto a westward-leading gravel road from Interstate 15 in Montana in my old Honda Accord).

Upon reaching the Continental Divide at this spot, Captain Lewis peered over the horizon to his west, hoping to see a gently sloping valley leading to the waters of the Columbia River and then the Pacific. Instead, he saw range after range of mountains. The rest of the journey would be difficult.

Unlike the hardships encountered by the famous explorers, I spent that night in comfort at a hotel along the Salmon River and enjoyed coffee from my hotel balcony the next morning.

It was a much rougher experience for Lewis and Clark after crossing Lemhi Pass and reaching the Salmon River. The explorers cut down trees and built canoes here, hoping to float down the river to reach the Columbia River. However, they found the Salmon River downstream of this point entirely unsuitable for canoe travel, and the party was forced to cross the mountains at another point, following the lead of their Shoshone guides.

In our century, the Salmon River is a magnet for kayakers and whitewater rafting enthusiasts. Although boats can navigate the rapids floating downstream, the waters are too rough for any motorized craft to return upstream. This is why the Salmon River is called the “River of No Return.” The lands drained by the Salmon River have been set aside by Congress as the “River of No Return Wilderness.”

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A list of all photo posts from the American County Seats series in TimManBlog can be found here.

All photos were taken by the author on June 20, 2012, or July 11-13, 2020.

My lifetime hobby is traveling to all of America’s county courthouses, and each month I post about a visit to a scenic or interesting county seat. It’s a hobby, and donations are greatly appreciated to help cover my costs.
Thanks,
Tim