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Early residents of Indian Valley found the wagons abandoned by Wright's party. They burned what was left of the wagons to salvage the iron.
The location where the deserted wagons were found became known as "Burnt Wagon Basin." The Forest Service erected a small monument at this location in 1963.
The trail is rocky and eroded, vehicles with high clearance are recommended.The cache offers panoramic views of the surrounding mountains, rivers and valleys.
The original cache (small white water proof container) contained a 101 year old American 1908 "V" nickel, 2008 "Roadbuilder" Idaho Geocachers coin, a robotic book light, and a couple other trinkets.
From "Landmarks" by Dale Fisk
Near present-day Cambridge, three wagons from Goodale's wagon train split from the party and headed north for the mines at Florence. The fate of these wagons, and the story of the eight young men who accompanied them, has become a local legend.
That same year, whites started using a trail up the Payette River, which went through Long Valley, past Payette Lakes, and on to Warren and Florence. These eight men either didn't know about this route up the Payette, or it had not yet been established. One has to remember that, at this time, Boise was not yet a town, and the vast area between there and Florence was totally uninhabited except by Indians. Other than the earlier fur trappers and very few prospectors it was virtually unexplored by non-natives. These men may have been the first to attempt to reach Florence from the south instead of via Lewiston; they certainly were the first to attempt it with wagons.
The best known of the men on this expedition was Dunham Wright, who was a distant cousin of Abraham Lincoln.
With seven other men I left the main emigrant train of 60 wagons at Middle valley and started to go to Florence where rich placer diggings were reported. We started with three wagons. The first day we left one wagon and doubled our ox teams on the other two. Then we rolled rocks, cut trees, got down steep mountains by tying trees behind the wagons, and the hill sides were so steep that it seemed the wagons would tip over endwise. [They went up the Little Weiser River drainage.] Then we came to more difficulties and finally to what looked like the jumping off place. [This was near the head of the Little Weiser, overlooking the steep drop off into Long Valley.] There we abandoned the other two wagons and cut up the wood of them to make pack saddles. (One of the men was a carpenter and had some tools with him. Cinches and other straps were made from the canvas tops of the wagons. They camped here for about two weeks.)
We had to make pack animals out of our cattle and that is a mighty hard thing to do. Cattle won't stand for it. But we put our blankets on them and we had one pony that we packed with our small quantity of flour and ammunition. (Everything in readiness we took a long last sorrowful look at our old wagons that we had mutilated, leaving chains, trunks, and all other paraphernalia that could not well go on oxen's backs.)
Finally, when we started with this pack train, we did not proceed far when the pony rolled down the mountainside and landed in a small lake at the bottom. (It took two men half a day to get him back, delaying our trip down the mountain, dark overtaking us long before we were half way down, having to stop and tie our oxen to trees and so dark we had to feel for the tree, took our packs off and got into our blankets, etc. the best we could, tired, hungry and thirsty. I woke next morning almost 15 feet below my blankets.)
When we got the pony out and repacked, we neglected to put on the ammunition, and went away without it. Then we found ourselves in a hostile Indian section without ammunition. The Indian signs were to be seen here - - figures with arrows sticking in them, and we knew what that meant. (The Indian trails had pictures of men made on peeled trees with red paint and an arrow left sticking in them.) We did not take to the Indian trail, but traveled after dark among the lodge pole pine -- tired, hungry, chilled, and anything but comfortable. I was then a boy of 20.
We followed down a stream and came to a valley where there was high grass [Long Valley], and during camp, a yellow jacket swarm attacked our cattle, causing them to go bucking and bawling in every direction and scattering our food and bedding to every quarter of the compass. (It was the greatest stampede the world has ever known for the size of it I think. Eight big steers going bucking, spiking, bawling, tails in the air, tinware rattling like a chaviri, they turned their packs underneath them and tramped our bedding and wearing apparel into strings, and tinware into a cocked hat, the whole thing looked as though it had passed through a terrible cyclone.) We spent three days getting things together, salvaging what food we could find through the high grass and what clothing and quilts we could get that would hold together.
Wright was nearly overwhelmed by the ordeal. He felt they were hopelessly lost somewhere in the uninhabited vastness of the Rocky Mountains. The men camped at Payette Lakes for three weeks, trying to find a way out. They climbed to the top of the highest mountain they could find in an effort to detect smoke from a friendly campfire, but saw none. They almost froze at night, having nothing but a few blankets to sleep under. They soon had almost nothing to eat but serviceberries. He noted that in this strange country the familiar stars in the sky were the only things he had ever seen before. His gold fever, which had burned hot until that point, left
Like old Moses leading the children of Israel out of the wilderness, we had to lead out of that wilderness, but while he was forty years at it, we were only three weeks. Finally we were obliged to take the Indian trail down the Salmon. After many difficulties, we saw in the distance what we thought was a band of elk, but what proved to be cattle. When we found they were cattle, we shouted for joy. We had subsisted on a little piece of bacon each morning and those sarvice berries. We were hungry and exhausted, but salvation was at hand.
The young men eventually made it to Florence, but met with the same disappointing failure to strike it rich that most of the other fortune-seekers there had.
A few years later, early residents of Indian Valley found the wagons abandoned by Wright's party. They burned what was left of the wagons to salvage the iron. Iron was a hard-to-acquire material for ealry settlers because they were far from any place to buy it. A good blacksmith could turn almost any scrap of iron into a useful item.
The settlers who found the wagon remains were puzzled as to who would have taken the wagons to such a remote spot-and why. It remained a mystery for a good many years before Wright's story became known. A local legend even developed that some kind of treasure was buried there, and a number of people dug around the site looking for it.
The location where the deserted wagons were found became known as "Burnt Wagon Basin." The Forest Service erected a small monument at this location in 1963.
Dunham Wright and his companions probably didn't know it, but their problem getting down the east side of the divide into Long Valley was caused by an interesting geologic feature which is characteristic of this part of Idaho. The mountains are generally steeper on the north and west sides and more gently sloping on the south and west sides. This phenomenon was caused by forces associated with plate tectonics. The "hot spot" at the surface of the earth that we know as Yellowstone National Park was once far to the west of its present location. Actually it would be more proper to say that the land over the hot spot was once far to the east of where it is now. As the American continent drifted westward it slowly passed over the hot spot. At a time when the hot spot was under what is now southwest Idaho, tectonic forces somehow caused the landscape for hundreds of miles in all directions to form ripples (mountains) which tilted toward the hot spot. Council Mountain, like many other mountains to the northeast of where the hot spot was when this event occurred, slopes more gently on its west and south sides. Its east side is so steep that it sometimes forms sheer cliffs. This characteristic can be seen on even relatively small hills in the Council area.
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