Nestled in a meadow about a mile and a quarter into the Rooks Creek hike sit the remains of an old mining operation.  It’s a great place to take a photo, but what most people don’t know is that this area was once one of the most important mining sites in the Wood River Valley.  In fact, the mines alongside Rooks Creek helped shape the route we now know as Warm Springs Road.

The story begins way back in 1878, with discoveries of silver-lead in the Wood River Valley. Prospectors swarmed to the region, creating a mining boom.  One of the early mining figures was W.A. Rooks, who owned a group of claims on Boyle Mountain, which rises above the creek that apparently took his name.  Mining on Boyle Mountain began in earnest in the early 1880s.  By the late 1880s, mines including the Ontario and Lucky Boy had helped produce nearly $1 million in lead-silver ore and about $50,000 of very rich zinc ore. Quite a strike!

To support the area’s mining, the Philadelphia Smelter was built in 1881 near the confluence of Warm Springs Creek and the Big Wood River.  By the mid-1880s, a wagon road ran twelve miles west from Ketchum up Warm Springs Creek to Rooks Creek and the mines of Boyle Mountain.  Ore from the mining country west of Ketchum traveled this corridor toward the smelters and railroad in Ketchum.  Today’s Warm Springs Road follows that historic route.

Most of what hikers see today are the remains of the Sunday Millsite, built by the Boston & Idaho Mining Company in 1907 as part of an effort to revive mining on Boyle Mountain.  The company constructed a concentrating mill capable of processing 100 tons of ore per day. The revival never really took off, however. By 1912, the mill had processed very little ore and much of the old Ontario mine was already inaccessible.

The surviving stone and concrete structures are foundations of the ore mill.  Heavy concrete blocks with projecting bolts once anchored mining machinery, while collapsed wooden structures and the remains of an office are still scattered around the site.

So, the next time you stop in this quiet meadow, try to imagine it without the quiet: machinery pounding, ore being crushed, wagons moving up and down the canyon and miners working the hillsides above. More than a century later, the mines are silent—but their road still brings us here.

Sources:
Idaho Magazine “The Smoky Mines”

USGS Bulletin 580-K “Ore Deposits in the Sawtooth Quadrangle Blaine and Custer Counties, Idaho

The Community Library: Philadelphia Smelter: A Key Component of the 1880s Silver Rush in the Wood River Valley