Elk River Back Country Byway

The Elk River Backcountry Byway is an all-natural and unpretentious route through North-Central Idaho. This is 57 miles of no-frills, back country road that parts of which may have you wishing your 2WD vehicle might have had higher clearance.

Elk River was originally founded as a remote recreation (hunting and fishing) camp. Then the Potlatch Lumber Company bought 4,000 acres of timber in the area in 1909 and built the first electric-powered lumbermill in America in Elk River, turning the place into a mill town. And then a few years ago Potlatch abandoned the area and Elk River returned to being a quaint recreational community on the edge of virtual wilderness.

From Bovill, you can turn east off of Idaho 38 onto Idaho 8 and travel to Elk River on pavement. This is a huge forested landscape with tantalizing views of the Clearwater Mountains on the horizon. This is wild and varied countryside with lots of wildlife. Once you get to Elk River make sure you check out the Elk River Historical Museum and get the full story as to how a hunting resort could become a bustling mill town and then return to its former status as a hunting resort. If you're here in the right season, you might want to see about the local huckleberry crop, too.

Just outside Elk River is the Elk Creek Reservoir, built by Potlatch as a "millpond" back in 1910 to store logs for the new sawmill they were building in Elk River. These days the pond is famous for the quality of its fishery and for the number of bald eagles, swans, ospreys and river otters that frequent the area.

From Elk River you'll be traveling on old logging roads. You'll pass by the trailhead leading to Elk Creek Falls and then come to the Dent Bridge across Dworshak Reservoir. The bridge is named for Katherine and Charles Dent, folks who homesteaded on the North Fork of the Clearwater back in 1895. The Army Corps of Engineers designed and built the bridge, starting in December, 1969. When they were done several years later, the 1,550-foot-long bridge was judged one of the 18 most beautiful man-made structures in America.

After crossing the Dent Bridge you'll be on the paved Wells Bench county road. Between Whiskey Creek and Orofino you'll be driving across Wells Bench itself, an area of farmsteads and ranchettes scattered among the benches and stands of timber (although the closer you get to Orofino, the less timber you'll see).

This is wild and woolly Idaho at its best.