Masonic Lodge - Silver City, ID (Part 4)

In the 1860's, two Masonic lodges, Owyhee #5, and War Eagle #6, met in Silver City, ID. When they merged in 1881, the name Silver City #13 was selected by the then-Grand Master.

Owyhee takes its name from the Owyhee Mountains that this "ghost town" is in. In the 1840's, a handful of Hawai'ians were fur trapping in the area, and were lost and never heard from again. If you pronounce Hawai'i without acccenting the H, it phonetically resembles... owhyee.

War Eagle lodge took its name from the particular mountain with the same name.

Although the lodge ultimately moved its permanent meeting place to Homedale, ID, they have returned every year to meet and perform degrees. This was the 128th annual homecoming.

Recently the brethren of Silver City #13 voted to sell the building. The gentleman who bought the building has been slowly repairing it and quietly improving it. While the overwhelming majority of the items in there today date to the era of lodge ownership, he has upgraded a few items that were NOT original. While the light fixtures, probably installed in 1903 when power came to the gulch, are original, the ornate medallions in the East and West ceiling where those lights are affixed are NOT original. Neither are the ornate antique doors at the top of the stairs to the lodge room itself, nor any of the items in one room decorated in period style as a bedroom.

Meetings in historic lodges like this one are honored past-times in the american West. For the states not on the western coast: after the initial overland road Oregon Trail runs and california gold rush after 1848, the miners slowly BACKTRACKED their way east and kept discovering gold. Places like Idaho, Montana, Nevada, were largely settled by Southern sympathizers in the 1860s during the Civil War era. Many of these miners and merchants set up camps wherever gold and water were plentiful, regardless of the local native tribes.

On todays date, a third degree ceremony was performed, on a candidate from my lodge, Idaho Lodge #1. Our lodge was originally from Idaho City, but now meets in Boise, and is also a historic lodge, very similar to this one shown.

I am a Past Master of Idaho Lodge #1.

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