Gilmore
Gilmore is a ghost town in Gilmore, Idaho. Former mining and railway settlement. It sits in the archive under ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. Abandoned now: the structure does the storytelling. The dossier keeps the place and the story in the same record — which is what the archive is for.
· in your passport — stamped · open it
Is Gilmore haunted?
No claims are filed here — the record keeps this place for its documented history, not for a haunting on file.
The record — long form
Gilmore, in Lemhi County southwest of Leadore, was a lead-silver camp in the Meadow Lake district, organized in 1880 on land that had been Shoshone country long before it was a mining district — the record notes the range's older use as traditional Shoshone gathering ground for medicinal plants. The camp's economics always ran through transportation: until the Gilmore and Pittsburgh Railroad arrived, ore went out by wagon on the order of eighty-five miles, which is to say barely at all.
The railroad made the mine workable, and the mine made the town — cabins, businesses, a power plant. The ending the tourism record gives is dramatic and possibly compressed: a power-plant explosion in 1929 shut the operation down. The research notes hedge it — the 1929 date may summarize a longer Depression-era decline, and the file leaves the exact closure year unresolved.
What the tailings left
Gilmore's afterlife is environmental as much as picturesque. The mine left some 110,000 cubic yards of lead-contaminated tailings, and the site has been through federal cleanup attention — the ghost town's second industry being the remediation of its first.
What remains is a scattering of structures — the record counts about six dwellings occupied year-round amid recreational use — distinct from the charcoal kilns in the neighboring hills that the notes warn not to merge into the entry. The file files it as heritage with no haunting implied: a mountain camp killed by the Depression and its own machinery, still settling its accounts with the ground.
Documented history
Tourism history associates its abandonment with the Great Depression and identifies surviving buildings. The town's documented rise and abandonment is the record the rest of the file stands on. Media accounts document it — reported history rather than legend. The detail is preserved in 'Ghost Towns'. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.
Media reportedVisit Salmon Valley
Sources on file
- 01Ghost TownsVisit Salmon Valley · tourism · A3
Field notes & open questions
Tourism’s 1929 abandonment phrasing may summarize a longer decline; exact closure year left unresolved. Distinct from nearby charcoal kilns.