Every winter, snow sculptors in McCall carve castles and serpents along Payette Lake. Sandpoint sits above water deep enough to hide a 30-story building. A hand-built log cabin with a working water wheel stands beside Big Springs near Island Park. Dozens of hot air balloons drift over Driggs each July for the town's Fourth of July rally. Wallace kept its whole downtown on the National Register of Historic Places. These seven Idaho towns each hold something worth the drive.
The main street of Sandpoint, Idaho. Image credit Kirk Fisher via Shutterstock
Lake Pend Oreille stretches out below Sandpoint like a sheet of dark glass, deep enough in places to swallow a 30-story building. Three mountain ranges frame the water, and the view from City Beach at sunset is almost out of this world. Downtown, brick storefronts more than a century old house galleries, bookshops, and cafes. The restored Panida Theater, a 1927 Spanish-mission structure finished in stucco under a red clay tile roof, still screens films and hosts live shows. Above town, the chair lift at Schweitzer Mountain Resort rises through pine forest into alpine bowls that disappear into cloud cover on a foggy morning. A short cruise on the lake aboard a local tour boat gives you the chance to trace the same shoreline that fur traders and steamship captains once used to reach the settlement below the Selkirks.
Bonners Ferry
Rod Benders Car Club annual June show in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Image credit David J. Mitchell via Shutterstock
North of Sandpoint, the Kootenai River winds around Bonners Ferry, a river town named after Edwin Bonner's 1864 ferry crossing built to carry gold-rush prospectors toward British Columbia. The Boundary County Museum sits in the middle of downtown, offering visitors information on the town's history and the Kootenai people who lived along the river long before settlers arrived. A few miles west, the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge spreads over more than 2,700 acres, where visitors can see moose, eagles, and migrating waterfowl each fall. There is also an old-fashioned general store called The Gathering Place that stacks its shelves with homemade jams, baked goods, and Amish furniture. Anyone with an extra day can experience a portion of the International Selkirk Loop, a scenic drive that threads through the Selkirk Mountains and crosses into Canada before looping back into Idaho.
Wallace
Downtown street in Wallace, Idaho.
Further south in the heart of the Silver Valley, the entire downtown of Wallace holds a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. The town has a frozen-in-time feel of a movie set built for a Gold Rush film. A century-old trolley from the Sierra Silver Mine Tour rattles visitors through downtown streets before descending into an actual underground silver mine, where a retired hard-rock miner leads guests past ore veins and century-old equipment lit only by headlamp. The Wallace District Mining Museum fills in the rest of the story with more than fifty exhibits on the silver, lead, and zinc that built the town. The Northern Pacific Depot Museum occupies a beautifully restored 1901 chateau-style depot, its steep gables and dormer windows looking more suited to the Alps than the Idaho Panhandle.
McCall
Marina in McCall, Idaho.
McCall is built along the southern shore of Payette Lake, a glacially carved basin so deep and clear that submerged tree stumps become visible when water levels drop in late summer. Half the lake falls inside Ponderosa State Park, where hiking trails wind out onto a forested peninsula jutting into the water. Locals have long told stories of Sharlie, a serpent said to live in the depths of the lake. Her legend takes physical form every winter during the McCall Winter Carnival, when sculptors haul in fresh snow to carve castles, characters, and creatures along the downtown streets, followed by a Mardi Gras parade and fireworks over the frozen lake. Warmer months shift the activity toward paddleboards and sailboats drifting across the water in view of downtown's shops and breweries, all within walking distance of the shoreline.
Ketchum
Street scene in historic downtown Ketchum, Idaho. Image credit: Heidi Besen / Shutterstock.
South of McCall, Ketchum has a greener kind of magic inside the trails of the Sawtooth Botanical Garden. A short drive south of downtown on Highway 75, the garden's Ellen Long Pavilion and Garden of Infinite Compassion sit among riparian ponds and mountain views, with a Tibetan prayer wheel set among the perennial beds. Ernest Hemingway spent his final years in the area, and a bronze memorial bust along Trail Creek Road honors the writer beneath a grove of trees he once enjoyed. The Sun Valley Museum of Art rotates exhibitions a few blocks from Ketchum's downtown galleries and boutiques. Come winter, Bald Mountain, located directly behind town, offers over 100 ski runs.
Driggs
Downtown Driggs, Idaho. Image credit NayaDadara via Shutterstock.com
On the less-traveled side of the Tetons, Driggs faces the jagged western wall of Grand Teton National Park without the crowds found on the Wyoming side. Every July, the town's Fourth of July celebration includes a multi-day hot air balloon rally with dozens of balloons drifting over the valley against a backdrop of granite spires. The Grand Teton Distillery crafts vodka from local potatoes and whiskey from regional grain at an elevation of 6,500 feet, with tours and tastings available in the shadow of the mountains it's named for. Anglers cast for trout along the Teton River, which runs straight through the valley floor.Grand Targhee Resort has lift-served mountain biking in summer and deep powder in winter. Table Mountain, one of the valley's more demanding day hikes, tops out with a view straight into the Tetons' western face, a reward most visitors on the Jackson Hole side of the range never see.
Island Park
Cabins along the river at Island Park, Idaho.
Island Park sits inside the rim of an ancient volcanic caldera, one of the largest on the continent, where the Henry's Fork of the Snake River sets out on its path. The Mesa Falls Scenic Byway winds along the river's canyon walls to Upper Mesa Falls, where the water drops 114 feet over a 200-foot-wide ledge in a spray visible from the overlook boardwalk. Along Big Springs, crystal-clear water bubbles up cold and constant year-round, forming a pool where giant trout gather beneath a footbridge. Nearby sits the Johnny Sack Cabin, a hand-built log cabin constructed in the 1930s, complete with a working water wheel. A drive up Sawtell Peak Road climbs nearly 10,000 feet to a summit overlooking the Island Park Caldera, Henrys Lake, and the reservoir below, laying out the entire volcanic basin at once.
Idaho packs glacier-carved lakes, working silver mines turned museums, and volcanic canyons into towns small enough to cross on foot. Wallace still runs visitors underground past ore veins by headlamp. Bonners Ferry sends drivers north along the Selkirk Loop toward the Canadian border. The seven towns here reward anyone willing to leave the interstate behind.
