Bill Timm’s cabin is still very much intact on Thunder Mountain. Just a few miles from the Dewey Mine.
Bill Timm was a scholar, miner, politician, adventurer, postmaster in the town of Roosevelt. Assayer for the US Assay Office. Those who knew him describe him as a man who loved his solitude almost as much as he loved Idaho’s mountains. Especially Thunder Mountain.
He rubbed elbows with the likes of President Herbert Hoover. In fact, they graduated from Stanford University the same year from the same class. Each earning their degrees in mining engineering.
Bill Timm also personally hand built the only remaining cabin in what is now the ghost town of Roosevelt, Idaho.
Jack Walker, a personal friend of Bill Timm, visited Bill Timm at the cabin often when he was just learning about mining in the 1940s. Jack Walker says “Bill Timm taught me everything I know about mining”.
Bill Timm died in the early 1950s, but not before selling the cabin and claim to Jack.
Walker says Bill Timm told him that the cabin he sold him was built in the summer of 1903 when Timm was most active at Thunder Mountain.
Walker worked the claim intermittently for six decades. Walker has since returned the claim to Forest Service ownership, citing his age and health as reason for giving up the claim.
