Finding Jarbidge

NOTE: The following is a special (bonus) feature from the editors of Meandering On The Way. It gives a more complete account of M’s road trip to Idaho and Nevada. WARNING: If you are not interested in boondock camping and/or curious about that part of the world, this could bore you to tears. No one’s feelings will be hurt if you skip it.

Part 1: Thursday and Friday

Some online sources from Nevada say that the town of Jarbidge is one of the most remote and hard to get to places in the state. It’s way up near the Idaho border and it’s about as far from Las Vegas as you can get–in several senses. A Nevadan who wanted to visit Jarbidge would first go to Elko, which is in the northeast part of the state, and then go 106 miles farther north. The second half of the route is on gravel and they say that very last part is so rough that you need four wheel drive. Also the road is closed in the winter. People also say that the scenery along the way is spectacular; M wouldn’t know because he didn’t go in that way. He went in from Idaho, which is easier. If you start from Twin Falls, for example, the trip to Jarbidge is only 92 miles and there is a small town or two along the way. Much of that route is also on gravel, but the roads are mostly smooth and straight and do not require 4WD.

Which is fine if you live in Twin Falls, but say you live in Western Oregon. To access Jarbidge from Idaho, first you’d have to get to Idaho. The easiest way to do that is to take I-84, which begins in Portland, goes all the way across Oregon and half of Idaho, and passes right through Twin Falls. As we shall see, M didn’t quite do that, but he did start out that way. After dropping E off at the Portland airport, he drove the first 400 miles of I-84, stopping in the town of Ontario, Oregon, right on the Idaho border. It was a longish drive, but M didn’t really mind. He’d brought a lunch from home, which he ate in a neighborhood park in Pendleton. Once in Ontario he rested for the night in a motel and finalized his plans for the following day. His idea was to proceed into Idaho somewhat indirectly, traveling southeast, not by the easiest and fastest route but rather by the opposite of that. Just for variety.

After an unexpectedly awesome free breakfast at his motel (Clarion), M set off southward from Ontario on U.S 20/26, looking for the road to the Succor Creek State Recreation Area. He soon came to Nyssa, Oregon where he missed a turn, resulting in an embarrassing number of miles traveled in the wrong direction. He was in Homedale, Idaho before he figured this out. So the first challenge of the day was to navigate sideways across some Idaho farm country trying to somehow intersect with Oregon Hwy 201, which was the key to his finding the road to Succor Creek. He ended up traveling west on Idaho 19 until he re-crossed the border, at which point Idaho 19 magically turned into Oregon 201 and everything got easier. In the unlikely event that you find yourself looking for Succor Creek Road without bothering with a map or GPS, don’t forget to make that right turn at Nyssa. It’ll save you time.

Anyway, after 532 miles of pavement driving, M was finally onto a proper road. It was nice and wide at first but also dry and dusty. Quite dusty. M has a fiberglass shell on the Frontier and the seal between truck and shell is dust proof. But the truck bed itself is not sealed very well. In fact, pickup truck beds are specifically designed with the goal of making sure that water can get out of the bed. This means that there are actually large gaps around the tailgate.

To address this problem, M had recently made a dust barrier. This consisted of a strip of foam left over from the truck bed mattress project combined with a wooden frame. This trip would be its first test.

M had forgotten, of course, to assemble the dust barrier before he left Ontario. So now he had to pull over and do it by the side of the road. But that was okay. It was kind of nice to have a reason to stop and take in the view.

The terrain changed from flat to hilly. The road went only gently uphill, but the land on either side got higher. Soon M came to a sign announcing the Succor Creek Recreation Area. It was around there that the road reunited with the creek.

As he got farther into it, M realized that the Succor Creek area was not quite what he had imagined. He’d been thinking of something isolated, with steep roads and a very small creek. He was thinking that it would be treeless, uncrowded, and lacking in any interesting rock formations. Why, he now asks, was he thinking that? Why didn’t he know exactly what it would look like? There are tons of Succor Creek photographs online and it would have been easy to find them. But M feels that he already has a lot of second hand information, way too much. What he needs are a few more dreams, simple ones that he can keep a handle on, and then some first hand information to go with them.

The reality of Succor Creek is that it was not all that isolated and that the creek was pretty good sized. Moreover, the official camping area had trees–not big ones but definitely trees. Similar trees were thick along the creek. And it was in a canyon, a sort of deep one.

M’s first order of business was to find a place to camp. Anticipating a possible Friday evening influx of other campers, he had arranged to arrive on a Friday morning. There were two sorts of places to camp: the official campground at one end of the canyon and a number of informal pull-offs at various places along the road. M went up to the campground to check it out first. It had eight sites arranged in a cramped circle around a waterless restroom building. As mentioned, there were a few trees to provide shade. The four best sites were already occupied. And since their occupants all had large campers or travel trailers, the area already seemed crowded. (Ha! Little did he know.) He turned around and went back down the road. Most of the pull-offs were still empty. M found a beautiful one, nicer than he’d expected. And by nice we mean that it was away from the road, had access to its own stretch of creek and provided some beautiful views. There were no trees where he parked, so he had to use the truck to make some shade.

There was a steep little side canyon close by and M thought maybe there would be some kind of trail up to the top. He started looking for such a route. But it was not to be. After huffing and puffing upward for a while and finally finding himself in a place that seemed too steep for safety, he gingerly made his way back down. After that he took his chair down to the stream and sat there for a while. Could a person who was sitting down there take off their shoes and cool their feet in the creek? Yes they could, but not for long. That water was cold. After a while M went back up to his campsite, set his chair down in the shade of the truck and spent some time watching the gray cliffs on the far side of the creek. The cliffs didn’t really do much and didn’t have much to say. They did communicate that they were there, that they were getting pretty old, and that despite their great age they still planned to be around a lot longer than M would be. Was the difficulty in making conversation due to the fact that the language of the cliffs was too primitive to express anything beyond the basics? Or was it because their language was just so different from M’s language that he couldn’t really understand it? Would Google Translate help? Naw, M was out of cell range. It seemed hopeless. Was it time for dinner yet? (For another take on the topic of communicating with the natural world, see this poem by Becky Hemsley. –Ed.)

In the middle of the night M had to get up and discovered that the moon was up too.

Finding Jarbidge – Part 2: Saturday

In the morning M wanted to get started early, as he had a long way to go. But just before he left, he took a few minutes to walk up the hill and take this picture, which shows the first leg of the day’s planned route.

M had noticed the evening before that he had been right to have arrived early in the day. There’d been a lot of traffic on the road. And there was even more this morning. And when he passed by the campground, he found it transformed–jammed with a dozen vehicles, lots of tents and trailers and a whole bunch of people who seemed to be having a grand time. On the other hand, that was the end of the inhabited area of Succor Creek. For the next hour of his drive south M didn’t see anybody.

Just past the campground Succor Creek Road again parts ways with Succor Creek. The creek stays down low while the road climbs up the west slope to reach the more or less flat country near the canyon rim. Here’s a view back down into the canyon after M had gotten up out of it.

The road onward looked pretty empty, but M knew it went somewhere. Sure enough, after a while he started to see ranches again. Another sign of human presence was a giant parking area for some kind of high desert equestrian jamboree. He saw nothing of the actual event, just a fenced field that had been turned into a parking lot for pick-ups. There were twenty or thirty of those, each one hooked up to a horse trailer. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Where were the horses and their riders? Off having fun somewhere, but where exactly and what kind of fun was a mystery.

Soon there were more farms and ranches. You wouldn’t call the area densely populated–no one’s nearest neighbor was closer than three quarters of a mile–but there were enough families around to have an active school.

Next came a major waypoint in M’s plan to get to Jarbidge by indirect means. (You’ll remember that Jarbidge is in Nevada, but first he had to get to Idaho, and here he was still in Oregon. As far as indirectness goes, he was doing pretty well. But that couldn’t last forever.) Not many miles past the school, Succor Creek Road ended at an intersection with U.S. Highway 95. At mile 571 of his journey he was going back onto pavement. He turned right and headed south, looking to get back off pavement as soon as possible. Seven miles later, there it was: Cow Creek Road. Or was it De Lamar Road? M’s sources disagreed. Never mind, it was headed in the right direction. He happily turned left and was on the gravel again. Not only that, he was in Idaho! (Not that there was any sign, but that’s what the map said.)

Cow Creek Road led southeast up a pretty little valley with a creek running down the middle. The landscape was treeless, but there was verdant new grass in the pastureland nearest the creek…

M counted four widely separated ranch houses along the creek. His wasn’t the only vehicle on the road; there was a white sedan poking along ahead of him. Eventually it turned off down the half mile long ‘driveway’ of the third ranch.

A few miles past the fourth house, things changed a little. The road was still following the creek, but the terrain was a little more hilly and the land on either side of the creek was drier. That was also the area where the people who made the road had decided that it needed to cross the creek, not once but twice. On the day M was there the fords looked like this:

M had never seen fords like this and at the first crossing he had to stop and get out and study it a little. He was, after all, out there all by himself, with no chase car to pull him out if he got stuck. As it turned out, these were nicely made crossings, with a firm, smooth bottom that wasn’t as far under the surface of the water as it first appeared. Off we go.

In the next few miles the terrain started getting steeper and trees began to appear. M came to a junction with another road that came in from the southwest. The two roads merged and headed east into the mountains. There was a sign there stating that the road was not maintained and that if anyone who used it required search and rescue, that person should be prepared to bear the entire cost. That was okay with M, especially on a clear day in lovely weather. In fact, it’s a pretty good policy, probably too good to last. In the future, when the world has finished going to hell in a hand basket, the road will have been technologically enhanced. There will be an entry gate which automatically locks your vehicle into self-driving mode. They’ll tell us it’s safer.

As it was, M drove himself up into the mountains. The road got narrower and rougher, but still not too bad. Eventually he came to the site of an old mine. It appeared that at some point people had lived near the mine and there were several vintage homes just across the creek from it:

A short distance past the mine M passed some buildings that had definite signs of being inhabited, at least in the summer. It was pretty quiet and although M didn’t actually see anyone, someone was probably there. The road got worse past this point. It wasn’t steep but it was very narrow and there was little or no gravel, just natural rocks and dirt. There were big brown puddles of recent snow melt whenever you came to a flat part. Since there were no big washouts, it was easily passable, as long as you kept it slow. There was nice scenery to be had on either side, but M couldn’t take his eyes off the road much to enjoy it. Still, he was having a pretty good time, picking his way along, pleased that there was no other traffic. And then, of course, suddenly there was other traffic, a white pick-up truck heading straight toward him. It was a full-sized truck and even though M’s truck was smaller, it was hard to see how the two vehicles were going to get past each other. To M’s right was a steep drop into the river and on the left there was an equally steep slope upward. The oncoming driver found a place where the road was slightly wider, pulled over as much as he could, and paused, which was nice for him because he was on the upslope side and M was the one who was going to roll down into the creek if it all went bad. But it actually went fine. M crept slowly ahead, not quite sure about that right edge, just making sure he was as close as possible to the other truck on his left. There was about an inch of clearance between their respective side mirrors as he went past.

Later on there were two more oncoming vehicles, but he met both of those on less stressful parts of the road. And then, by golly, a big blue pickup appeared behind him! Geez, that made four cars over the course of less than an hour. Somehow he had gotten caught in rush hour traffic on the road to Silver City.

M knew he was on a road that led to Silver City because he had seen those words next to a dot on his map. He was decidedly not prepared for what he found when he finally got there. It turns out that Silver City is a booming tourist attraction, a ghost town whose body has been reanimated and repurposed from silver mining to 21st Century fun times in the mountains. (For photos of the town and details about its history, click here.) Late spring/early summer is high season for visitors to Silver City and on the Saturday that M came through there were hundreds of them. It was chaos, with dozens of vehicles trying to navigate through narrow dirt streets with more potholes than you can imagine. There were some hand-lettered signs saying that the speed limit was ten miles per hour. But with all the potholes and all the kids and their associated grownups running around it was best to go even slower than that.

There are about seventy structures in the town, all over a hundred years old. Silver City began as a mining boomtown in the 1860’s and prospered up until 1900, when it began its decline. By 1940 the one-time population of thousands had shrunk down to just one person, who proudly self identified as both mayor and fire marshal. The reanimation of the ghost town began in the early 1970’s, when someone reopened an old hotel. Although the land is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, all of the structures are privately owned, often by descendants of the original miners.

All M wanted to do was find his way through the mess. It took him a few minutes, but he did finally find a way out. Silver City is situated right at the pass, so he soon found himself descending the eastern side of the Owyhees. The road down into Idaho was wider and smoother than the one he had just come up from Oregon. There was also way more traffic. Besides cars and trucks, there were dozens of roaring OHV’s and dirt bikes. But the route also offered some beautiful views, which he was able to enjoy when he found a likely place to pull off and have lunch.

The rest of his day’s drive was uneventful. The road–now named Silver City Road–led down out of the mountains and into flatter country. At mile 626 of his trip the gravel surface ended and pavement returned. Ten miles later he had reacquired cell service. He told his phone to direct him to Mountain Home, Idaho, a largish town where he planned to spend another night in a motel.

What about Jarbidge? you may ask. Well, getting to Jarbidge from Mountain Home isn’t quite as easy as getting there from Twin Falls, but it’s close.

Finding Jarbidge – Part 3: Sunday and Monday

If M had actually been in Twin Falls, getting to Jarbidge would have been simple. He would have taken U.S. 93 south down to Rogerson, Idaho, then turned off the highway onto Three Creeks Road, then taken the third left onto 1520 N Road, which is also Three Creek Road. (Okay, that’s mildly complicated.) Anyway, Three Creeks Road is the key to finding Jarbidge from the Idaho side. It gets you within fifteen miles of the actual place.

Being in Mountain Home made finding Three Creeks Road a little more complicated, but M just did what Siri told him to do. The drive took three and a half hours to go just 150 miles. It was a mix of gravel and pavement. The first half was through farmland, most of it dead flat. Then came sagebrush country that had a few more hills. And then at the very end, just before the Jarbidge turn-off, M had a glimpse of more rugged country.

The last place in Idaho that M came to is called Murphy Hot Springs. Beyond that the road to Jarbidge got much worse. It was wide enough not to be scary and it wasn’t steep or muddy, but it was seriously bumpy. Nice scenery, though.

After ten or so miles of very slow going over the bumps, suddenly the road got wider and smoother. Though no human beings appeared, signs of human habitation were abundant. Eventually, there it was, the Jarbidge main drag.

After visiting the Trading Post and touring the jail, M drove out of town and starting looking for a place to camp. He found that there were several campgrounds in the area, all of them pretty basic, all of them a ways out of town, and all of them empty of campers. As he was driving around to check them all out…it started to rain. Around this time, he passed the spot where the Pine Creek West Fork flows into the Jarbidge River. Both streams were running high and it was quite a sight.

The rain stopped after half an hour. The clouds turned from gray to white and broke apart so that some blue was showing. There was even a little sunshine. Hmm, said M, who was not eager to camp in the rain. Now maybe this was just one passing storm–or maybe not. He took a little walk up the road and saw an abandoned mine up on the hillside that would be great to explore and maybe take pictures of. But just then the sky began to darken, in a rather serious way. M turned around and headed back to the truck. The rain started just a minute or two before he got there. The sky was all dark and showed no sign that the rain would be stopping very soon. “Okay,” said M after fifteen or twenty minutes, “I’ve seen Jarbidge. And now I’m leaving and going back to that motel in Mountain Home.” It was around 3:30 in the afternoon and it was another three and a half hour drive back to MH, but it could be done. He headed back to Idaho. As he made his way north again, along that ten miles of really bumpy road, the rain continued with no sign of slacking. Even in the rain the scenery was pretty nice.

M later thought that he probably should have just got a room at the Outdoor Inn, and some booze and grub to go with it. But if he had, he would have missed a rather spectacular drive back across Idaho. Once he got out of the canyons and hills and back onto the seemingly endless flatlands, he saw that there were thunderstorms scattered all over the place. At any given time he could see two or three of them: off to the right, off to the left, ahead or behind. Each storm featured its own dark clouds, thin streaks of lightening and dark curtains of rain. For a while the roads he was on were dry or just faintly damp. Then suddenly he came upon a minor flood and saw that the next twenty yards of road were covered with two or three inches of water. He slowed down as quickly as he could, but still made some quite spectacular splashes as the truck pushed through. It is more comfortable, of course, to travel through flood waters sedately, which he then proceeded to do. Though he could still see several thunderstorms in the distance, there was no sign of the one that had dropped these particular waters.

Later on, as seems inevitable, his route intersected with the path of one of the storms that he had admired so much from a distance. Oh what violence can be sown from drops of water and molecules of air! M survived this and reached his motel at around 7:00, not too much the worse for wear, but disappointed not to be camping.

On Monday M started for home, 556 miles away. With no need to get back immediately, he planned to stop for the night along the way. He was still owed a night of camping under the stars. He drove away from Mountain Home on I-84, passed through Boise, stopped in Nampa for gas, and crossed into Oregon at Ontario. He then got off the freeway and onto U.S. 26. Two hundred miles later he reached the Ochocos where he started looking for a place to camp. There’s a nice campground at Ochoco Summit, but alas he found he couldn’t afford to stay there. It was a self service place where you choose a spot, fill out a form, and then drop an envelope of cash into a slot. With a senior discount the cost was only $10, but M couldn’t swing it–all he had was a fifty and a five. So instead he got went back to the highway and found a nearby Forest Service road that led up the side of a mountain called Dixie Dome. Plenty of places to camp up there and no other campers at all. Plus, it wasn’t raining. Also, zero other traffic.

After a mountainside breakfast of bacon and pancakes, M found his way back down to the highway and headed for home. Luckily, this final leg of his journey took him right past the Sisters Bakery, where he used a credit card to obtain a chocolate donut and a marionberry scone. He got back to Corvallis in the early afternoon, after a journey of 1,509 miles.

He had found Jarbidge but hadn’t explored it properly. He’ll have to go back.