Halfway House

For fifty years, Crow Creek Road linked the Mormon settlements of Bear Lake and Star Valley. The 100-mile round trip between Afton, Wyoming, and the railhead at Montpelier, Idaho, took a team of horses from 3 to 7 days depending on conditions, and road ranches along the route served freighters and their draft animals in all weather. Among stations including Nield Ranch to the north and Camp Giveout and Henggi’s Dairy to the south, Halfway House, in the middle, became the largest and best-known stop on Crow Creek Road. In 1912, Benoni (Noen) and Mary (Maime) Wilkes homesteaded 322 acres at a site where cabins had been built by Hale-Tolman with the mail contract, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Ritson, and Charles and Orson Anderson and their wives. There Noen Wilkes built Halfway House and a large barn that could hold 32 teams and their drivers. It became a haven for freighters, the mail wagon between Afton and Montpelier, and the daily stagecoach, where travelers could stop for dinner and a change of horses. Maime telephoned Afton each day to learn how many guests were coming so she could prepare a family-style meal on her wood-burning range, while the bunkhouse also had a cook stove for those who wanted to make their own meals. A stop there was a social event and a welcome relief from the hard work of a freighter’s life. Life at Halfway House for the Wilkes family ended in 1925, when the state highway, known as the convict road, shifted traffic farther east over Salt Creek Pass.

Idaho · United States