STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Go behind the scenes of Ketchum and Sun Valley history when Mountain Rides bus tours resume today.

The free hour-long tours will start at 10:15 a.m. every Friday at the Visitor Center in the Starbucks building through Aug. 31.

Tourgoers are asked to sign up at the visitor center. If more than 20 people want to go, the group will be divided into two buses.

Tour directors will point out such landmarks as Ernest Hemingway’s gravesite and the nearby railroad spur, which made it possible for Sun Valley to be built as America’s first destination ski resort, said Jim Jaquet, who oversees the tours.

It will take riders into the Warm Springs area where they will learn how galena ore was discovered here in 1880 and the Philadelphia Smelter created to refine the ore, with the ingots shipped across America by railroad.

Visitors will learn how Guyer Hot Springs, not Sun Valley Resort, was the first resort built in the area. And they will see the Warm Springs Lodge, where a fire of unknown origin started in April 2018.

They will get a lesson about Sun Valley Olympians as they pass two statues of Gretchen Fraser, the first American to win Olympic medals in alpine skiing. And they will learn how the Warm Springs Golf Course became what may be the most expensive dog park in the world.

They will learn about Ketchum’s famous ore wagons as they pass freight owner Horace Lewis’ old house, now The Elephant’s Perch. They’ll learn how Averell Harriman spent $39,000 in the middle of the Depression to purchase 4,000 acres on which to build Sun Valley Resort.

They’ll learn how the Sun Valley Lodge is not what it seems, and they’ll learn how Carol Holding insisted that the kids of Dollar Mountain have facilities and lifts equal to those on Bald Mountain.

They will also learn how the Elkhorn Hotel started the free bus system in Ketchum and Sun Valley as a  way for its guests to get to Bald Mountain. And more.

At the end of the bus ride, tourgoers will have an option to visit the Ore Wagon Museum, which will be unlocked for an up-close-and-personal look at the behemoth wagons that used to ferry precious metals down the narrow Trail Creek Road in the late 1800s.

“The idea of the tour is to showcase some of the history of this area and to show how easy it is to get around Ketchum and Sun Valley with our free buses,” said Jaquet. The tour itself is sponsored by Mountain Rides and the Community Library, where we got most of the history from.”