Challis Idaho, a quiet historic town

Challis Idaho, a quiet historic town today, used to be the largest city in the Custer County.

Founded in 1878, Challis lost many of its original architecture during the 1983 earthquake, but some have been rebuilt. I noticed that all buildings utilize wood as the main material, so the keep the authenticity of the place. This nostalgic place is full of character and a visit here will take you back to the times of the mining and Western history.

The main street is not very long, but full of typical Wild West type of wooden buildings. I got inspired by this picturesque Wild West town and I applied to my photos a painterly look, and uploaded them to my Fine Art America gallery. Just click on them more details:

In the Western regions of the USA, it’s not rare to see animals in the streets. I was however surprised to see a deer running right on the main street of the town. Challis Idaho is definitely a quiet place, no question about 🙂 Well, I decided to make this picture as a digital painting as well, because the scene was quite uncommon to me, not being native of North America, nor of Northern USA.

Obviously, Challis Idaho is a very friendly place, and probably not so quiet in the past… 🙂
The old bar in town, “Bux’s Place Bar”, now closed, have seen better days, for sure… The attracted old neon sign hanging above their entrance my eyes. Most certainly, that was once illuminated at night time.

Revisiting Challis

My husband and I revisited Challis in the fall of 2021. Good news: we had the pleasant surprised to see that Bux’s Place saloon reopened its doors to the public. Now the locals and tourists have again a place to hang around 🙂 It looks like also the sign has been updated.

This time I was able to take some more photos of this so interesting and picturesque Wild West place. Here is another historic wooden building with the sign that reads “The Challis Messenger” – probably a newspaper place. However, from other signs I learned that it also has been a saloon. At different points in time, the building was Watson and Jordan Saloon in 1880 and Black’s Saloon in 1904. Wow! I also uploaded this image to my Fine Art America gallery. Click on it for prints:

It was a gorgeous sunny autumn day, and I walked a little on the streets of this town, with the camera in hand. I liked to observe the small houses from the “grandma’s time”, full of character, and this is one of them. The filtered light coming from the big trees on the sides of it attracted my eyes and I decided to give it a painterly look in the digital media.

But talking about making my photos painterly in the digital media, this is what I’ve seen on the way to Challis. It was a small meadow by the side of the Salmon river, with beautiful autumn colors:

For the fun of challenges, I posted this to: RDP Sunday – Hang