Joseph Plains
is an area directly west of Grangeville, Idaho, although the best access (and possibly the only)
to the area is down the Graves
Creek Road out of Cottonwood,
north of Grangeville. If you look at a
road map you will see no roads in this area.
There may be access from the Hammer Creek area near White Bird but I’m
not sure. I know there were settlers in
this area in the late 1800’s but for some reason it didn’t grow. There are now just a few scattered cattle
ranches in the area. The elevation of
the plain is about 4,400 feet.
My first trip to Joseph Plains
was in October of 2010 when a friend who was experiencing some health problems
asked me to accompany him there to his hunting camp to help bring back his camp
trailer. I knew there were two Geocaches
up there so naturally I planned to kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately my GPS receiver which was new
at the time was giving me some problems so I was unable to locate the caches. However, it was working long enough for me to
place one. It happened to be right at
the hunting camp very near the pictured structure. It was called “Ye Royal Crapper”. Up until about a week ago no one had found
it.
The cachers who
found it are a husband and wife team in Lewiston
who are friends of mine and also are the owners of the other two caches in the
area. While up there they also checked
their caches and put them in good shape.
I had been wanting to get back up there to find those caches so as we
were returning to town for a couple of days I decided it would be a good time
to make the trip.
Wednesday morning
I loaded up the BMW, as a good deal of the travel would be on gravel roads, and
set out for Cottonwood. The Graves Creek road out of Cottonwood is a
nice paved road that takes you down to the Salmon River. At the river the road forks. The south fork goes for a couple of miles and
is part of the Pine Bar Recreation Area.
I went chukar hunting in this area some years back and I remember
getting no birds but getting very wet as it rained the whole time. I turned north instead and went for about a
mile to the Rice Creek
Bridge across the Salmon
River. There was someone
fishing on the bridge and I saw some rafters on the river below.
After crossing the
bridge the pavement ends so I stopped to deflate my tires some to better
accommodate the twisty gravel roads.
While I was doing this an old timer in a hay truck stopped and asked me
to retrieve his mail for him at the nearby mailbox. He said he was a lifelong resident of the
area and asked what I was doing. He had
never heard of Geocaching so we got into quite a discussion. I showed him a map of where I was going and
he warned me to watch out for logging trucks.
If you are
familiar with the Lewiston grade at Lewiston, Gilbert grade
at Orofino, Greer Grade at Greer or Seven Mile Grade at Kamiah, they are all in
the area of 1,800 to 1,900 feet in elevation gain. In comparison the Rice Creek Grade rises over
3,100 feet and is a twisty gravel road.
You can be sure I was taking those sharp hairpin curves very slowly. There was a logging truck in front of me so I
stopped a couple of times to avoid catching up with his dust trail. I passed him at the top where he had stopped
and I thought that was unusually polite for a logger to worry about my eating
his dust.
About three miles
from the top I came to the first cache called “Joseph Plains
– Boles”. There were a few old
structures here and it had apparently been a small settlement at some distant
time. While I was stopped the logger pulled
up to see what I was doing (I guess) and I thanked him for letting me
pass. Turns out, that wasn’t the reason
he stopped at all. I should have
known. He was just getting some water to
wash the dust off himself. After finding
the cache nearby I sat in the shade close to where the picture was taken and
had my lunch. At first I thought 8 cows
were going to join me but they politely kept their distance.
The other cache
was just over six miles further and I passed through a logging operation on the
way. I saw some great firewood
opportunities in their slag piles but you would have to live up there to make
it worthwhile. The cache which required
a short hike down a sloping meadow was called “Joseph Plains View” and it lived
up to its name. It was a little hazy but
it gave a view all the way to the Seven Devils.
Just as I was
getting back to my motorcycle I saw a logging truck coming up the road behind
me. I did not want to get in that dust so I quickly jumped on, stuck my
gloves in my jacket and blasted off. In
less than a mile I couldn’t see him any more so either he was going quite a bit
slower or turned off.
I made it back
down the Rice Creek Grade with only one minor slip on one of the hairpins. It was a really hot day and you could feel
the temperature rise as you descended the grade. After crossing the Salmon
River bridge I found some shade on the Graves Creek road and
stopped to inflate my tires for the pavement.
I made it back home around 4:00 pm having covered a little less than 200
miles. As far as I know I didn’t lose or
break anything. (The second picture is going down Graves Creek) M/W
12 comments:
"Back in the day" when I worked for the Idaho Land Dept., in the summer I would often hear of a fire in the Joseph Plains. Difficult country to get to and fight fire in. Thanks for the pictures!
My goodness, what a remote area. That must have been a thrill, just to go off so far from "civilization." A grade of 3100 ft. Yikes!
I'll bet those caches mean more to you because of the remoteness. Things that are harder to get have a higher value, don't they?
Why is the date on some photos and not on others?
I don't know about the camera dates unless it has to do with the scene setting.
What's strange about this area is in spite of it's seemingly remoteness it's really not very far from civilization.
I AM READING A BOOK BY AUTHOR TERRY C. JOHNSTON CALLED "LAY THE MOUNTAINS LOW" THE SAD FLIGHT OF THE NEZ PERCE AND I WANTED TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT PRESENT DAY JOSEPH'S PLAINS AND THE TERRITORY. BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY!I AM AN EASTERN GAL BUT MY HUSBAND WAS BORN AND RAISED IN THE WEST AND I SAW ALOT OF THAT BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY.
Thank you for your comment. If you're interested in Joseph Plains history, a must-read is Eyewitness to Idaho History by Marion L. Shinn.
As a resident of up on Joseph Plains, I can tell you there is a Doumecq Road access from White Bird. a quick check of a map could tell you that.
Thank you, Kat Kradle, for your tip.
I don’t know how I found you, but I’m really glad I did. You brought back sooo many fond memories. It’s not that I’m old, well 86, yeah I guess you’d have to consider me old. As a 14 year old young boy, I had the opportunity of a life time to work for the Heckmans, Eck and Lizzie, the brothers Don and Vern and Don’s wife Katie, and their two sons, Donnie and Jackson (?). You talked about Graves Creek and Rice Creek and the rock road from Salmon River up to the plains. I can still smell the Syringa on that dusty rocky road. I was hired to pick up rocks, yes, pick up rocks. When there is a HARD freeze, it pushes the rocks to the path of least resistance, and they come up to surface. These big rocks damage the header/cutter bar of a combine. Hey, it was a job. I rode horses and went out with the crew to fix fence. (( crew was inmates from Idaho Correctional Facilities, who were almost ready for parole and ranchers contracted with Idaho State to have them come work and be with their families.)). We brought the cattle up from winter grazing down on the Salmon and then branded. It is Not like the movies. It is work. Have to separate the yearlings, calves. Someone has to keep branding fire going, rope and tie the calves, actually brand ((Britchen brand)), castrate, tag ears, hoof and mouth pill forced down the throat, burn the horns of the males. Make sure this calf when released goes to the exit of corral. Branding is a time consuming job which takes a lot of men. We had tractors that pulled gobal disc, harrowing, drilling ((seeding)); it’s a dirty, dusty job. Got to do this for two summers. It is dry land ranching. The views on Joseph Plains is majestic. You can look south and see the 7 Devils. You can look down, and I mean down, to see the Snake and Salmon Rivers, portions of Hell’s Canyon ((deeper than Grand Canyon)) Pictures can’t really catch the beauty of the plains. You have to see it and the beauty will be ingrained in your memory. Thank God I had the opportunity to meet the Heckmans and work for them at Joseph Idaho. Oh, yes, there was in fact a one room school that only ran seasonal to accommodate the
Harsh Winters. As you can tell, GOOD MEMORIES.
I lived in Billy creek from 83 to 89 as a teenage boy. Sure wonder if anyone remembers the soldiers grave on Bon Flats behind the Lamb place. The lamb place is the summer house for Shroyer Ranch AKA horseshoe bend ranch. As The Story Goes the soldier was shot when he went out to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night from his own unit they were following Chief Joseph before he crossed the salmon into Oregon.
My grandpa ran the Flynn Creek Ranch in the late seventies. My uncle ran the Shroyer Ranch during the time I lived there. There's not much of that Salmon River Frontage that I'm not familiar with if anybody ever needs to know anything. As a young boy I covered from Skeleton Creek all the way up to Burnt Creek. I still remember a few of the old Bob Crouthers and Bob Hamilton stories:-)
I grew up in that area as a child. 83 to 89. I know where there's a soldier's grave. He was supposedly shot while they were following Chief Joseph before he crossed the river into Oregon. He was shot from his on unit and so it was never really publicized. There's no marker or really any history that I can ever find online about it. Just an old steel fence post marks it the last time I was there in the early 2000s.
My granddad Harry Davis ran the Flynn Creek Ranch in the late 70s for Donnie or Don was maybe still alive back then. I know Dion and Dean their grandchildren. Did you know Eva Taylor? Did you ever hear any stories about the soldiers grave behind the lamb place on what's called bon Flats? The Story Goes he was shot by some of his own guys when he went out to go to the bathroom at night. They were chasing Chief Joseph before he crossed into Oregon. One of the old timers around there Bob Hamilton had a story about someone wanting to dig it up one time to find out if there was actually anyone there. I know a group of the locals got together and made sure that didn't happen. Like the grave used to have a fence around it but they removed it so it couldn't be found. This was probably around the time that Bob Crothers was running the Shroyer Ranch. Maybe late 70s just a guess
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