New Meadows, Idaho

New Meadows is located at the northern end of the Payette River Scenic Byway in the southern part of Meadows Valley. This is the juntion point of US Highway 95 and Idaho Highway 55, which connects New Meadows with McCall and Boise. Originally, New Meadows was founded at the end of the Pacific & Idaho Northern Railroad, about 2 miles west of the older townsite of Meadows. The Pacific & Idaho Northern built a depot at New Meadows and the town formed around that. In those days, the railroad ran a mostly "farm-to-market" operation but that gave way about 1940 to the growing timber interests in the area. Union Pacific had bought the line in 1936 but in 1979, they abandoned everything north of the Tamarack Sawmill just north of Council. About that same time the Adams County Historical Society got title to the railroad depot and have been using it as a repository for their materials and artifacts ever since. The railroad depot also functions as a community center for New Meadows and even hosted a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institute back in 2005. The population of New Meadows peaked in the 1960's and has been slowly dropping since.