04/04/2026
Beaver Dicks Ferry Bridge on the Bungee Biway
We first jumped this bridge a few weeks after it opened in 1996. For Steve’s 40th we tied him up, loaded him in the bus, distracted him til we got there, pulled him out of the bus blindfolded, hands tied and as a complete surprise to him, threw him the f**k off the bridge in the middle of the night. He figured out on his way down that he was bungee jumping. We had nonchalantly attached a harness then dipped half of him in the Boise River 97 feet below in November.
Near this prized bridge on Highway 21 over the Boise River, where Highway 21 and Warm Springs Avenue meet, stands a highway marker for Beaver Dicks Ferry. Richard “Dick” Leigh was a notable trapper and mountain guide who lived mostly in the Teton and Jackson areas. Born in Manchester, England 1831, he fought in the Mexican/American War then settled in Idaho. He operated the ferry in 1863 and 1864 that provided crossings of the Boise River for travelers headed to Idaho City’s gold mines through Mores Creek.
He was the mountain guide for F.V. Hayden’s survey of the Teton Range, Wyoming in 1872. The expedition crew named Leigh Lake, Beaver Dick Lake (since renamed String Lake) and Jenny Lake after him and his wife. Teddy Roosevelt and hunting party visited his camp on Two Oceans Creek where they conversed of their hunting stories.
He married a Shoshone woman whom he named Jenny in 1863. They had five children. Jenny and the children all died of smallpox brought to them by a visiting Indian woman.* Dick later married Susan Tadpole and had three children. He was a respected man in the Teton area until he died in 1899. He was buried in Wilford, Idaho near Rexburg.
We named this bridge Beaver Dicks Ferry Bridge in his honor because you cannot say Beaver Dicks Ferry without smiling. The water below is a few feet deeper and hence, the effective height of the bridge lower, than when built after the pump house went in a couple years later. At about that same time a house on the flat beyond the bridge was removed and the family moved away. What a beautiful place to have lived.
*A letter from Beaver Dick Leigh describing the smallpox sickness and deaths of Jenny and five children can be found in Margaret and Olaus Murie’s book Wapiti Wilderness, p. 89.