Spanish Town Idaho

Dogs Off-leash

Features Birding · Commonly Backpacked · River/Creek · Wildlife

The area around the trail is beautiful. There was a fire that went through this country a few years ago. The tree canopies are wide open with lush green vegetation below.

The trail is very well maintained. This is a very easy trail, with great footing. I would recommend this run to anyone.

There are very few places in Idaho that are surrounded by mystery and legends as fantastic as Spanish Town Idaho. Just search Spanish Town Idaho and read about the history of this place. Whether true or not, after reading about the Spanish Town Site, you'll have to visit the place yourself.

The Spanish Town Site is located 1.5 miles from the parking area. There are currently no structures standing at this location. Just old rock foundations that used to support the structures that were there. This is a great area to visit for those appreciate Idaho history.

This trail has great footing from the parking area to Spanish Town. Please be careful around the creeks as you'll have to cross them a couple of times to get there.

One of the best examples of old items in this area is a camshaft in the creek bottom of Elk Creek. This camshaft was used in a stamp mill. Stamp mills were used in the late 1800s and early 1900s to crush or mill quartz ore into a powder. This allowed them to run the crushed ore through a sluice box to recover gold. The steel portions of the camshaft are still intact. However, the wood portions of the camshaft have long since deteriorated.

What makes this so interesting is, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, Fraser and Chalmers (the manufacturer of the camshaft) merged with Edward P. Allis & Co. of Milwaukee in 1901 to form Allis-Chalmers Co. So this camshaft has to be over 100 years old. To see the images of the camshaft both in the 1950s and in 2016 please visit Idaho Outdoors.