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Montour, Idaho

William Dewey Jr. of the Idaho Northern Railroad Company founded Montour in 1912. The town’s name purportedly comes from the French word “monture,” which means a “mount or frame,” and was intended as a nod to the area’s aesthetic charm. Although Black Canyon Reservoir, which was impounded in the 1920s, did not directly inundate Montour, the townsite suffered from ongoing, dam-induced sediment build-up, and the Bureau of Reclamation purchased the town’s land from property owners in the 1970s. A 1979 map depicting Montour before displacement, created as part of the US Department of the Interior’s Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, shows a sawmill, church, school, bank, railroad house, mill, houses, and ranch (pictured above), among other structures.