STORY BY JOHN W. LUNDIN   

PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

In 1940, Sun Valley expanded recreational opportunities for its summer and fall visitors on Silver Creek, 25 miles southeast of Sun Valley near Picabo.

The area was prime territory for hunting and fishing in one of the west’s best spring-fed creek fishery and nearby farms, which included two miles of stream front.  Don Fraser and Pat Rogers negotiated the purchase of two small ranches; the Gillahan ranch in 1940 for $8,000, which was the downstream half; and the Sullivan ranch on the upper section of the river (where Sullivan Lake was located) in July 1941, for $4,285, creating the Sun Valley Ranch.

Under Pat Rogers’ management, the major use of Sun Valley Ranch was recreation.  The railroad built two cabins and a dog kennel on the west arm of Sullivan’s Lake to house guides and entertain clients.  Sun Valley guests took the train from Ketchum to the closest rail stop, Hay, near the present Hayspur Fish Hatchery.  They were taken by buckboard or motor vehicle to the Sullivan Lake cabins.  The resort’s horses were pastured at Sun Valley Ranch in the fall.  The site became a popular location for fishing and hunting in the summers and falls for Sun Valley guests.   

In fall 1942, Sun Valley experienced an “exceptionally fine fall business.”  Sun Valley Ranch was serviced by the resort’s rail motor car which stopped within a half mile of the Silver Creek property, and guests were taken to the property on a surrey.  The best pheasant hunting was around Richfield (north of Shoshone) and Rogers was attempting to make arrangements with a rancher to meet their guess at the depot and take them to the hunting area.

Sun Valley Ranch on Silver Creek continued to be a key part of Sun Valley’s summer and fall activities for a number of years.  Guests experienced challenging fly fishing in Silver Creek, a slow-moving chalk creek where the large fish were difficult to catch.  The area also offered excellent upland bird and duck hunting in the fall that attracted many sportsmen.

Sun Valley was operated as a Naval Rehabilitation Hospital during WWII. The mental and physical wounds of 6,578 Navy, Marine and Coast Guard patients were treated there through Dec. 1, 1945.  In fall 1945, Sun Valley’s General Manager Pat Rogers prepared a report discussing work necessary to bring Sun Valley back to a condition to accommodate guests in its traditional style.  His report, dated No. 23, 1945, “Proposals and Suggestions for Post-War Purposes covering Construction - Renovating - Decorating and Future Policies,” said that hunting parties could continue with private guides while limiting operations to bird hunting. New equipment was necessary for all sports.  Stables and dog kennels needed repainting and work was needed on the rodeo grounds and fencing.

Sun Valley reopened after WWII in December 1947, but conditions were different.  Union Pacific management changed, adding more uncertainty.  In February 1946, George Ashby replaced William Jeffers as president.  Arthur Stoddard replaced Ashby in 1949.   Harriman said Stoddard “was never very keen on Sun Valley.  He didn’t understand this, your basically goodwill value throughout the West, particularly Idaho.”

Dorice Taylor described how Ashby differed from Jeffers.  Ashby considered himself to be an enthusiastic shooter and donated a trophy to the trapshooting contest held every summer.  However, Ashby was “no sportsman” and had several conflicts with Taylor Williams, Sun Valley’s popular fishing and hunting guide who was a favorite of many guests, including Ernest Hemingway.  One time, Ashby was riding on a car fender shooting doves as the car moved, which was illegal. A game warden, trying to be politic, asked Williams to speak to Ashby, which he did, but Ashby was not pleased.  Another time, Williams took Ashby and a group of business executives on a hunting trip.  When they left the car and started hunting and shooting in all directions, Taylor returned to the car.  Ashby was furious and asked Williams what he was doing.  He replied that unless the men allowed him to have them hunt properly, he wasn’t going to risk getting in their cross fire.  Ashby demoted Taylor and wanted to fire him.

Hemingway was upset by the way Ashby treated Williams and had his own run-in with him.  One day when Hemingway met Ashby and Pat Rogers in Sun Valley, he heard Ashby say “So the great white hunter is still around,” a remark he resented.  Hemingway began staying in Ketchum rather than Sun Valley and using a Ketchum byline instead of Sun Valley.  Sun Valley was changing from the vision that Harriman had for the resort.

The year 1952 is often seen as the end to Sun Valley’s glory years.  Pat Rogers, Sun Valley’s longtime manager responsible for much of its ambiance, left because of Stoddard’s austerity program designed to cut its $500,000 yearly loss.

“Elegance began to go” said Dorice Taylor, the resort’s publicity director.  Sun Valley was still a major destination resort but Union Pacific did not invest the money necessary to keep it at the same level that made it famous before the war.  Its facilities declined, it lost much of the atmosphere for which it was known, and its place in the ski world changed as other resorts grew and competed for the ski market.

When Hemingway returned to Sun Valley in 1958, after a decade’s absence, he reconnected with his old friends. Ernest and Mary Hemingway bought a house in Ketchum from Bob Topping in October 1959.  The house was built using the same cement forms used to build the Sun Valley Lodge, making the concrete house appear to be wood.

The house is on the west side of the Big Wood River with views east to the Pioneer and Boulder Mountains. Hemingway had houses in Key West, Florida, and Cuba.  Following the Castro revolution in Cuba, Hemingway gave up his house outside of Havana and the government seized the house and its contents, including 5,000 books.  He lived full time in Ketchum after 1960.

Ernest and Mary spent their time in Idaho in the 1950s, hunting and socializing with Hollywood and local friends, such as Lloyd and Tillie Arnold, often going to Silver Creek to hunt birds.  However, Ernest struggled to continue his writing in the late 1950s, and battled depression for a number of years.

Journalist and writer Hunter Thompson captured the attraction of the Wood River Valley for Hemingway, in his book, The Great Shark Hunt:

“...and in the end, he came back to Ketchum, never ceasing to wonder why he hadn’t been killed years earlier in the midst of violent action on some other part of the globe. Here, at least, he had mountains and a good river below house; he could live among rugged, non-political men and visit, when he chose to, with a few of his famous friends who still came up to Sun Valley. He could sit in The Tram or The Alpine or The Sawtooth Club and talk with men who felt the same way he did about life, even if they were not so articulate. In this congenial atmosphere he felt he could get away from the pressures of a world gone mad and ‘write truly’ about life as he had in the past.”

Ernest Hemingway’s suicide at age 61, in his house in Ketchum on July 2, 1961, has become part of Sun Valley’s history.  Hemingway’s death was front-page news in many countries. President Kennedy said Hemingway was one of America’s greatest authors and “one of the great citizens of the world.”

Hemingway’s legacy lives on in Sun Valley.  He is buried in a simple grave in the Ketchum cemetery with a view of the surrounding mountains. The Community Library administers the Hemingway house and holds an annual Hemingway festival in the fall, bringing in academics to discuss his work.

There is a simple Hemingway memorial in a grove of trees above Trail Creek east of Sun Valley.  It contains part of a eulogy Hemingway wrote for his friend, Gene Van Guilder, who was killed in a hunting accident at Silver Creek in 1939, which expressed Hemingway’s feelings for the area:

    BEST OF ALL HE LOVED THE FALL.  

        THE LEAVES YELLOW ON THE COTTONWOODS

        LEAVES FLOATING ON THE TROUT STREAMS

        AND ABOVE THE HILLS

        THE HIGH BLUE WINDLESS SKIES.

        ...NOW HE WILL BE A PART OF THEM FOREVER.

The Janss Company purchased Sun Valley for $3 million in 1964 after Union Pacific wanted to get out of the resort business, obtaining over 4,000 acres of land.  In his oral history, Bill Janss said Union Pacific wanted out of Sun Valley so badly “they’d been hawking it on the streets.”

Janss said buying Sun Valley was like buying a national park: “We jumped in because we knew that it was a tremendous opportunity and you’ll forever hate yourself for not taking a shot at it.”  

Averell Harriman, surprised to hear of the Sun Valley sale, said he would never have gone along with it and was unhappy it was sold. But his brother approved it.  Harriman was critical of the decision and Stoddard--the president of Union Pacific at the time.

“Sun Valley was a nuisance to him, and there [were] a lot of demands...I never would have approved that sale if I had stayed on the Board...From the standpoint of the railroad financially, it might have been wise.  But I thought it was very important for the goodwill of Union Pacific to keep Sun Valley...”

Harriman had not been actively involved with the railroad since 1940, and was not in a position to influence the decision. The sale included Sun Valley Ranch on Silver Creek, consisting of two ranches totaling 479 acres purchased in 1940 and 1941, for $8,000.

Under the railroad, Sun Valley Ranch was used for recreation, a center for bird hunting and trout fishing.  Silver Creek is a slow-moving, spring-fed creek fed by underground aquifers bringing water from the Big Lost and Big Wood Rivers. It contains a rich variety of food for a healthy population of rainbow and brown trout, which are famously elusive and hard to catch.  

The railroad built two cabins and a dog kennel on the west arm of Sullivan’s Lake to house guides and entertain clients, and its horses were pastured there in the fall.  The ranch was not used for agriculture until after Pat Rogers left Sun Valley in 1952 and Union Pacific cut back its subsidy to Sun Valley.  Aerial photographs, from 1957, show all arable land on Sun Valley Ranch was under cultivation, and cattle were kept there later.  Janss was advised by a Sun Valley guide to end overgrazing on the Ranch, and barley was grown.  

After Bill Janss bought Sun Valley from the Janss Company in 1968, he needed more capital and decided to sell Sun Valley Ranch.  Local conservationists, fishermen and hunters were concerned about losing access to Silver Creek, so they banded together, got the Nature Conservancy interested, and engaged in what Holland called “by far its largest fundraising project in the Northwest.

In April 1975, Union Pacific gave the Conservancy $30,000 to help preserve the 479 acres that, ironically, had been purchased for just that purpose 35 years before.  The Nature Conservancy acquired the ranch from the Sun Valley Company, and the Silver Creek Reserve was established in 1976.

The Nature Conservancy significantly expanded the Reserve, and by 2017, it owned 851 acres of land along Silver Creek and protected 12,600 acres through conservation easements acquired from neighboring farm owners and ranchers. It was “one of the most successful private stream conservation efforts ever undertaken for public benefit.”

Silver Creek remains a treasure for the Sun Valley area and is a heavily used fishing and outdoor resource for the community.

EDITOR’S NOTE: More about the history of Sun Valley and Wood River Valley can be found in John W. Lundin’s books, Skiing Sun Valley: A History From Union Pacific To The Holdings, and Sun Valley, Ketchum and The Wood River Valley, as well as his many history essays at the Center for Regional History at The Community Library.  His website is https://www.johnwlundin.com/.