Liam Guthrie, Regional History Librarian
Adams Gulch is well known today for its popular hiking and biking trails, but the gulch’s history is deeply intertwined with the lumber industry and the Flowers Sawmill, which inhabited it for decades. This 1911 photo shows the sawmill that once stood at the mouth of Adams Gulch, along with wagons and sleds used to haul lumber.
The gulch’s first sawmill was built much further up the gulch, near the confluence with Eve Gulch, by Abijah Adams, for whom the gulch is named. Adams had already been operating a sawmill on Warm Springs Creek since 1881, but the mines and boom towns of the valley created a high demand for lumber, so Adams opened his second sawmill in Adams Gulch by 1886. Adams operated this sawmill until his death from illness in 1892. The sawmill was sold to Hobart Beamer of Hailey, who hired Wes Flowers to work in the sawmill.
In the busier summer logging season, Wes and his family would live at the sawmill. The sawmill had several houses, cabins, a boarding house, and a blacksmith shop. Wes worked at the sawmill and his wife Addie assisted with cooking for the sawyers living in the boarding house. During the winter, the rest of the family would return to Hailey so the children could attend school, while Wes remained in Adams Gulch to run the sawmill.
By April of 1907, Wes Flowers had bought the sawmill from Beamer. The Flowers family loved their summers in Adams Gulch and soon applied for a homestead at the mouth of the gulch. Here they built a frame house and a few outbuildings. In 1910, they relocated the sawmill from its old location up Adams Gulch to be nearer the homestead. Wes also took up farming and ranching on the homestead.
This photo shows the sawmill in the winter of 1911, which unfortunately would prove a tragic year for the Flowers family. While logging that winter in Adams Gulch, Wes and his eldest son Arthur were struck by an avalanche, killing them both. This was the start of hard times for the family, as Wes’s younger sons Eugene and George, respectively eighteen and fourteen, were forced to take over the sawmill and ranch to support their family.
Though the sawmill and ranch were mortgaged and even put up for sale multiple times, the Flowers family persevered. The Flowers Brothers ran the sawmill, planted crops, ranched cattle, and even trapped wild game in the winter to get by. The brothers were well-liked and respected in the community. Even in the dead of winter, there are many stories of Ketchum residents trekking up to Adams Gulch on skis to fetch the brothers for a dance or a potluck. The brothers eventually married two Swedish women from Illinois in a 1939 double wedding and built a log cabin for each couple on the Flowers homestead. They continued operating the sawmill all the way until George’s death in 1968.
Note this story was originally published in March of 2025 in the Idaho Mountain Express.
