Bay Horse Mining District, Custer County, Idaho

The Daughtry Mining Claim contains one adit. The entrance to the adit has some substantial structure to it with a reinforced caging of timber and an external gate reaching about 25 feet inward until hard rock and there, another box iron reinforced gate is encountered. We found a compressor or pump about 220’ feet into the mine that appears to be somewhat wholly intact. Various other bits of pipe, ladders, planks, cable and railroad ties were also found. There was no wildlife observed in the mine, but there was some evidence or rodents. This was a very interesting mine in terms of its size and workings. There is plenty of mineralization in numerous places along the length of the drifts. The road leading up to the site is a decent 4×4 accessible road with a fair amount of parking at the entrance to the claim. The area has great scenery with the road leading to the claim passing through boreal forests of immense conifers with patchy areas of sage and scrub brush. When we visited the site we found water about ¼ mile north of ‘Daughtry Gulch’, it is unknown whether this could be a constant or seasonal water source for the claim. There are several good hard-rock outcrops on the road leading to the mine entrance. Most prominently is the large conglomerate that is more resistant to erosion and is made of well-sorted, beautifully rounded quartzite pebbles. Just outside the mine there is a staging area that is still in good shape, though not overly large, probably 100-150 square feet with a fairly steep drop off of tailings down the hillside.

Host/wall rock:
Ramshorn Slate – Mostly thin-bedded well-laminated agrillaceous and phyllitic rock with well-developed cleavage at an angle to the bedding; includes thin slabby impure sandstone layers mostly in upper part; a thick lens of basal conglomerate in the Garden Creek-Bayhorse area. Slate is medium to dark gray, greenish gray, and purple, locally light greenish gray to silvery gray or dark brownish gray, weathers gray and brown; comprises very fine quartz, sericite, chlorite, and clay minerals; some carbonate in widely scattered sandy layers. Mineralization is Miocene in age. Host rock is reported as dolomite but it appears to be slate which is in agreement with the geologic map.
Commodity – Fluorine/Fluorite
Ore – Fluorite

Bayhorse District
North of Sun Valley on highway on 93 west of the Salmon River a few miles is Bay Horse, a town that was almost a ghost town before it got started. Hopes for another gold mine to rival the mine at Leesburg faded quickly when only a small amount of gold was found. In the process, however, a rich vein of silver was discovered and Bay Horse had its start in the early 1870s. The most productive years were in the 80s and 90s. Operations continued until 1915 and then were shut down and the town abandoned. Today charcoal ovens that were used to make charcoal for the smelter and old buildings can be found along the dirt main street of BayHorse.

Bayhorse got its start 1864 when a few small gold veins were found and a small camp began. Though there are several tales of how the settlement came by its name, the most popular is when area prospectors met a miner who had been digging between Clayton and Challis with the help of two bay horses. The man told the others that he had discovered rich mining opportunities up a steep canyon on the north side of the Salmon River. Because the other prospectors couldn’t remember the man’s name, they simply referred to him as the “man with the bay horses” and the name stuck.

Though prospectors continued to comb the area for the next several years, finding small amounts of gold, it wasn’t until 1872, that the Bayhorse area really began to attract numerous miners when three men by the names of W.A. Norton, Robert Beardsley and J.B. Hood discovered a rich vein of silver. Robert Beardsley and his brother soon started the Beardsley Mine which overlooked the mining camp. When a prospector named Tim Cooper found another rich silver vein, he started the Ramshorn Mine. Other mines soon followed and within months, men, machinery and cabins quickly flooded the area. The size of the mining camp increased again in 1877 when hard rock mining began for silver and lead. By the following year, the mine was operating on a large scale, with numerous tunnels spread throughout the area. A stamp mill and smelter were completed in 1880.

Bayhorse’s peak years were during the 1880’s and 1890’s, when the hillsides were dotted with cabins and the town included numerous saloons, boarding houses, assay offices, banks, a stone Wells Fargo building, a post office, six beehive kilns to make charcoal for the smelters, several ore and timber mills, and two cemeteries. The town’s population reached a high of about 300 residents.

The Ramshorn Mine remained productive until 1888, at which time other mines were also declining. By 1896, the beehive kilns were abandoned and in 1889 the town was struck by a fire which destroyed several buildings. Over the next decade more mines closed and people began to leave the area. By 1915, all mining operations had ceased and Bayhorse had become a ghost town.

In the next several decades, mining operations were revived periodically for short periods, the last time in 1968. Over the years, the Bayhorse Mining District was one of the longest running silver and lead producers in Idaho.