More Valuable Than Gold

The Riggins irrigation ditch was built in 1891 by early pioneers Charlie Clay and brothers Isaac and Johnny Irwin to supply water to their gold mining operation. By 1894, as gold mining waned, the ditch was turned to irrigation, and the water it delivered to the arid flat soon proved more valuable than gold. The ditch became the community’s main water source, providing irrigation for garden produce and orchards as well as drinking water and fire protection. In the early 1920s, it was extended south to include intake from the Little Salmon River. Later, cisterns were constructed for domestic water, but the original irrigation system remains in use. The Salmon River Road began in the late 1890s when R.E. Lockwood built a narrow lane along a steep hillside to his mining claim on Short’s Creek. In 1934, the Civilian Conservation Corps established two camps, F-106 at the confluence of the Little Salmon and Salmon Rivers and F-109 twenty miles up the Salmon River at the mouth of French Creek, and crews built the road from each end, completing it in 1938. Lockwood’s original road is still visible, and “Camp F-106” can still be seen painted on the rock face at the mouth of the Little Salmon River. A third camp, F-107, was built two miles south of Riggins at Windy Point, and its crews constructed roads and bridges on Elk Creek, Race Creek, and Cow Creek, helped build several forest fire lookouts, and fought wildfires in the nearby forests. The stone chimney of the camp’s recreation hall is all that remains.

Riggins, Idaho · United States