Along U.S. Highway 20 in southern Idaho, at a place called Hill City, there stand the remains of a cribbed grain elevator. For the eastbound passerby, on this way to "Somewhere" and finding himself in the middle of "Nowhere," the elevator first comes into view as the highway reaches the crest of a low hill and curves slightly. Suddenly, the weathered, blue-gray of the elevator rises skyward, interrupting the wide open spaces of the Camas Prairie, hinting that once upon a time, some time ago, life was lived here. A spot on the map now. Hill City, in its prime, was the terminus of the Hill City branch of the Oregon Short Line Railroad and home to nearly 300 residents. A handful of nondescript buildings remain now, but in the early decades of the twentieth century it was a complete town with daily train service. Some elderly residents of the Prairie say, emphatically, that at one time more sheep were shipped by rail from Hill City than any other place in the world, a claim all the more remarkable because there is rarely a sheep in sight today.
