Joyce: Located on
Sinker Creek. Established in 1865 by
Matthew Joyce, still working cattle ranch today.
Colette: Located on Castle Creek, has original Stone House,
still a working cattle ranch.
Gabica (Montini):
Located near the confluence with the Snake River with Sinker Creek. The
stone barn and bunkhouse are still standing, Oregon Trail immigrant stopover.
*Interesting Note on name of Sinker Creek: In 1847 prospectors were said to have found gold nuggets so large they used them as fishing sinkers!
Early People - Native peoples are estimated to
have been in this area for 14,000 to 15,000 years. You will see examples of their culture preserved in Petroglyphys
which you will ride by near the Snake River.
Shoshone and Bannock tribes are native to this area and are thought to
have acquired horses around the 1700s.
1.) Jane Mason (Owyhee’s Calamity Jane)- was a cattle
and horse rustler around 1899.
2.) Joe Monaghan- lived as a man for 30 years without
detection. Worked as a gold miner,
cowboy and served on juries at a time when no woman was allowed to! The undertaker discovered her true sex after
she had die in 1904!!
3.) Kittie Wilkins:
The Horse Queen of Idaho Raised
horses from 1885 to 1911. At one time
she had 4000 head (see, you don’t have so many after all!!) She exported teams by train to the East
Coast and sold many to the US Army.
Many people feel that there is still a lot of gold out there
just waiting to be found!
One interesting note is that the Main Street of Oreana runs
true North and South. Surveyors depend
on this Initial Point to establish land boundaries everywhere in Idaho.
The Snake River plain is one of the most widely known and
extensive volcanic regions on Earth. The first eruptions began 15 million years
ago in near the southwest corner of Idaho. Since that time, volcanic eruptions
seem to have migrated eastward at 1 to 2 inches per year, with the most recent
volcanic activity having taken place in eastern Idaho and Yellowstone. Basalt
lava flows (dark, more fluid flows from the earth’s mantle) have covered much
of the original craters and volcanoes, but time has exposed views into the
volcanic past in unusual places. Much of the red rock you will see in the
canyons is rhyolite, a more viscous lava flow originating as the continental
crust is heated from below. Rhyolite extrusions sometimes erupted violently,
resulting in flows of hot ash, which welded over time to form tuff, which you
will see as light colored stone, similar in appearance to sandstone.
10 million years ago, a series of large lakes began forming,
periodically blanketing southwest Idaho. This series of lakes is referred to as
Lake Idaho. Marine fossils are abundant in this region from Lake Idaho’s waxing
and waning shorelines. The lake was
permanently drained 1 million years ago when a then-small tributary of the
Salmon River eroded head ward, eventually reaching the lake and causing its waters
to drain northward, forming the Snake. (This tributary, eroded by the massive
flood of water from Lake Idaho, became the Hells Canyon of the Snake River. The
rhyolite canyons you will see (Castle Creek, Sinker Creek, Pickett Creek) were
also formed as Lake Idaho drained. Windblown lakebed sediment formed many of
the bluffs and ‘badlands’ formations that you will see.
‘Murphy Melons’ - 15
thousand years ago Lake Bonneville (Eastern Idaho, Utah) broke through its
natural dam, unleashing a monumental torrent, which filled the Snake River
canyon. Melon boulders of basalt were ripped from the walls of the Snake River
canyon, rounded by bumping against one another and deposited in gigantic
‘gravel’ bars. Some of these can be seen along Hwy 78 outside of Murphy.
Petroglyphs were carved on some of the larger rounded basalt boulders along the
Snake River thousands of years ago.