“There’s dynamite in Smith Basin,” Nancy said simply. “Yep. I’m sure Jack put it there. We was up there doing some diggings for gems. If I remember right, he’d kept a powder cache up there in a cave.” She smiled while looking past me, rocker creaking next to her too-hot-for-me-to-stand-it woodstove, obviously remembering those good times in wild country with Jack.
We both sat silently while she ran in reverie mode. He cuckoo clock ticked away the time. My wandering eyes noted her unique and ingenious firewood carrying system: an old but fully functional wheelchair with worn blue vinyl upholstery was stacked with cordwood. Then my mind put it all together; her wheelchair ramp at the back door was not for her; it was for firewood. Four more loaded wheelchairs in the queue confirmed it for me. She turned back toward me, smiling and said, “Just thought you’d wanna know.”
I was at Nancy’s house checking on her. She’d lost Jack 20 years ago. Now elderly, her water well was on the fritz. After some checking, I found that her pressure cut in-cut out valve contacts were burned. I filed the points clean, and had it going in another few minutes. Water restored, we had some time to chat. She filled me further on her memories with Jack.
Jack and Nancy made sort of a prospecting team. They were one step above rockhounds—their passion for rocks had became an income stream. There were several “gyppo” prospectors in our country around at that time—from the 50s to the 70s. They’d make enough panning for gold and blowing up veins of volcanic depositions in search of gemstones.
I’m not a geologist or prospector, but I know enough that finding “color” in Idaho meant a lot more than the yellow of gold. There’s dozens of gemstones to be found in Idaho’s rich geology. Most of the state is a hopeless tangle of rocky peaks, many covered by ash shot from eruptions from as far away as prehistoric Mt. Mazama (the former cone over what is now Crater Lake, Oregon, about 350 miles away) and as close as the Challis Caldera, which is only 15 miles away from Alderspring, as the crow flies.
Thankfully, all of that volcanism is silent, but the ash and granite have left many unique rocks behind for people like Jack and Nancy to discover. In order to help speed erosion that normally uncovers such wonders, Jack used pick, shovels, wheelbarrows, bulldozers and—you guessed it—dynamite.
He was a “powder monkey,” as those purveyors of powder—blasting powder—were called. They were experts at prying—or blowing rocks open and apart to reveal the beauty within.
Jack was one of those experts. He blew rocks open. I wouldn’t be surprised if he left a small legacy of powder strewn across central Idaho. Powder people often cached their sticks of dynamite in quantity. Transportation was always a little risky; dynamite is fairly stable if it is of recent manufacture, but it still can get set off through impact or a good hard bump on a rocky road. It’s because the active ingredient in a stick of dynamite is pure nitroglycerin.
When transporting dynamite, the blasters would minimize risk by minimizing trips. If one case of dynamite somehow touched off in the back of a pickup truck, it was a goner along with the driver. If ten cases got accidentally set off in the back of a pickup truck, the truck and driver were still goners (for certain, it was a bigger goner). No net difference, except for the size of the boom. But if a blasting crew chooses to do ten trips, each carrying a case instead of one trip with 10 cases, the risk is multiplied tenfold of something going as they say “gunnysacks.”
So they cached it, hidden for all intents and purposes from everyone but themselves.
But here’s the problem: old powder monkeys have a way of dying. Just like the rest of us, they succumb to the dust from which we came. They too, become part of the rocks and substrate below our feet. And when that happens, the secrets of their gold-lodes, gemstone quarrys and powder caches go with them.
I’ve ridden horseback all over Smith Basin’s wide sagebrush expanse. Over the years, we’ve had thousands of cattle up there cruising wave after wave of great hills covered with grass and sage. The tilt of the basin rolls up to the peaks of the Salmon River Mountains, where sage gives way to tree. I’ll often see things on the ground from my high-on-the-saddle vantage point; an agate translucence, the sparkle of a broken geode, or reflecting rosy quartz crystals—all the stuff of a quest, a living for Jack and Nancy. I’d even find an occasional perfectly shaped arrow point, usually made of a blue-greenish agate, shaped by an intrepid hunter of thousands of years ago.
But I have yet to find a cave with dynamite. There’s still more country to see, but I’m starting to get skeptical. I don’t think Nancy’s wrong—I just think I might be in the wrong basin. But it’s big country, and even after grazing cattle up there for twenty years, I always discover new things.
Smith Basin lies smack dab in the middle of our 70 square miles of Hat Creek summer grazing ranges. Hat Creek was the epitome of the Wild West in the late 1800s. It’s all broken foothill and mountain country that can hide almost anything. There’s rumors of prohibition moonshine stills up there I have not yet found. There was a notorious cattle rustler on what is now our remote Little Hat Ranch (the neighbors in nearby valleys sought to “string him up” before he inexplicably disappeared).
Up in the main stem of Hat Creek, a conclave of anti-society polygamists homesteaded in the remote canyon. Word has it that the long-skirt wearing women all wore six-guns. Then there was a roving band of outlaw World War I deserters who took shots at anyone who dared to venture there. After the rustler disappeared, the next owners of our Little Hat Ranch would get hazed by outlaw rifle shots aimed near them to spook their teams of horses while they made hay or fed cattle.
There’s even been several recent reports of Sasquatch on our Hat Creek grazing country. We just keep an open eye while we journey across the backcountry on horseback. As with the unfound powder cache, I certainly look for remnants of a wild past, but the land holds a close hand, keeping its secrets. Some of those will never be found. And that’s just fine with me.
But I think I’ll pass the powder cache thought on to my crew if we graze the basin this year, in case that cave does exist. I really don’t want anyone going in there. Cows don’t go for caves much, so I’m good there. It’s just curious humans that get blown to “kingdom-come” when stumbling on nitroglycerin, and a 20-something year old, like most of those on my crew, is very curious. If you didn’t know, old dynamite is severely unstable. The slightest movement can set it off.
If we find it, I’ll certainly be letting the experts know. Idaho has a fair share of old dynamite laying around, and the need for risk mitigation is real. And hopefully, we’ll get to be there when they touch it off. It will be a big bang. It’ll be fun, they said…but for now, it’s fun to know it might be out there…somewhere in Hat Creek.
Happy Trails.
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