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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Topic Author's Original Post - Apr 23, 2010 - 08:59pm PT
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Death of 'Caveman' ends an era in Idaho
Richard Zimmerman, known to all as Dugout Dick, succumbs at 94
BY TIM WOODWARD - twoodward@idahostatesman.com
Copyright: © 2010 Idaho Statesman
Published: 04/23/10
Known as the "Salmon River Caveman," Richard Zimmerman lived an essentially 19th century lifestyle, a digital-age anachronism who never owned a telephone or a television and lived almost entirely off the land.
"He was in his home at the caves at the end, and it was his wish to die there," said Connie Fitte, who lived across the river. "He was the epitome of the free spirit."
Richard Zimmerman had been in declining health when he died Wednesday.
Few knew him by his given name. To friends and visitors to his jumble of cave-like homes scrabbled from a rocky shoulder of the Salmon River, he was Dugout Dick.
He was the last of Idaho's river-canyon loners that date back to Territorial days. They are a unique group that until the 1980s included canyon contemporaries with names like Beaver Dick, Cougar Dave and Wheelbarrow Annie, "Buckskin Bill" (real name Sylvan Hart) and "Free Press Frances" Wisner. Fiercely independent loners, they lived eccentric lives on their own terms and made the state more interesting just by being here.
Most, like Zimmerman, came from someplace else. Drawn by Idaho's remoteness and wild places removed from social pressures, they came and spent their lives here, leaving only in death.
Some became reluctant celebrities, interviewed about their unusual lifestyles and courted by media heavyweights. Zimmerman was featured in National Geographic magazine and spurned repeated invitations to appear on the "Tonight Show."
"I ride Greyhounds, not airplanes," he said in a 1993 Statesman interview. "Besides, the show isn't in California. The show is here."
Cort Conley, who included Zimmerman in his 1994 book "Idaho Loners", said that "like Thoreau, he often must have smiled at how much he didn't need. É What gave him uncommon grace and dignity for me were his spiritual life, his musical artistry, his unperturbed acceptance of life as it is, and being a WWII veteran who had served his country and harbored no expectations in return."
His metamorphisis to Dugout Dick began when he crossed a wooden bridge over the Salmon River in 1947 and built a makeshift home on the side of a hill. He spent the rest of his life there, fashioning one cavelike dwelling after another, furnishing them with castoff doors, car windows, old tires and other leavings.
"I have everything here," he said. "I got lots of rocks and rubber tires. I have plenty of straw and fruit and vegetables, my dog and my cats and my guitars. I make wine to cook with. There's nothing I really need."
Some of his caves were 60 feet deep. Though he "never meant to build an apartment house," he earned spending money by renting them for $2 a night. Some renters spent one night; others chose the $25 monthly rate and stayed for months or years.
He lived in a cave by choice. Moved by a friend to a care center in Salmon at age 93 because he was in failing health, he walked out and hitchhiked home.
Bruce Long, who rented one of his caves and looked after him, said the care center "had bingo and TV, but things like that held no interest for him. He just wanted to live in his cave.
"People said he was the only person they'd ever known who was absolutely self-sufficient. He didn't work for anybody. He worked for himself."
Born in Indiana in 1916, Zimmerman grew up on farms in Indiana and Michigan, the son of a moonshiner with a mean streak. He rebelled against his domineering father and ran away at a young age, riding the rails west and learning the hobo songs he later would play on a battered guitar for guests at his caves.
He punched cows and worked as a farmhand, settling in Idaho's Lemhi Valley in 1937 and making ends meet by cutting firewood and herding sheep. In 1942, he joined the Army and served as a truck driver in the Pacific during World War II. When his service ended, he returned to Idaho and never left.
He raised goats and chickens, tended a bountiful vegetable garden and orchard and stored what he couldn't eat or sell in a root cellar. A lifelong victim of a quarrelsome stomach, he survived largely on what he could grow or make. Homemade yogurt ranked among his proudest achievements.
He was married once, briefly, to a pen-pal bride from Mexico. The other woman in his life, Bonnie Trositt, tired of life in a cave, left him for a job as a potato sorter and was murdered by her roommate. He claimed to see her spirit in the flickering light of a kerosene lamp on the cave walls.
He rarely went to church, but read and quoted continually from the Bible.
Services are pending. A brother, Raymond Zimmerman, has requested that his remains be sent to Illinois.
Tim Woodward: 377-6409
Read more: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/04/23/1164899/death-of-caveman-ends-an-era-in.html#ixzz0lyTRfb9Y
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Fletcher
Trad climber
not very much, recently.
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Apr 23, 2010 - 09:07pm PT
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Wow, what a guy and life. Sorry to see him go, but looks like he got the most out of it.
Eric
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Apr 23, 2010 - 11:12pm PT
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I love characters that don't fit the mold! Not the bizarre Unibomber flakes, but true individuals who live their days in their own adventure, on their own terms.
Damn the torpedoes!
Dugout gets the climber's send-off.
And NO, this is not a religious stroke.
It's just my little signature way of memorializing the fallen.
I just like the image.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Sep 18, 2013 - 08:53pm PT
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Dugout Dick's place was always an "interesting view" while driving between Challis & Salmon.
Somehow, he had managed to hang onto a chunk of BLM land, that he did not have legal title to, until his death.
I'm sorry to share that the BLM has now reclaimed and destroyed his dugouts, although on the bright-side: there is a nice historical marker about him near the site.
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 18, 2013 - 09:01pm PT
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WoW !!!
A true American.
There should be more?
Are there?
He ain't no cave man.
He's an intelligent human being .......
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Sep 18, 2013 - 09:58pm PT
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The BLM gave Dugout Dick a historical marker...Will the National Park do the same for a talking duck...?
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Dapper Dan
Trad climber
Menlo Park
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Sep 18, 2013 - 10:36pm PT
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Forgive my ignorance: how could he just live on the land? Was he on BLM land ? Are there stay limits there ?
Did he purchase the land he built his shacks on ?
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Sep 18, 2013 - 10:44pm PT
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I'm sorry to hear that Dugout Dick and his way of life has come to an end.
Modern life and all it's "trappings" isn't for everyone.
He wasn't a slave to the info-net, he wasn't a text zombie. That much I'm sure of.
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TrackerTodd
Mountain climber
CA
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Sep 18, 2013 - 10:52pm PT
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What dapper Dan said? How did he get away with living on the land. "He punched cows" , sounds harsh, I envy how he lived, RIP DD.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Sep 18, 2013 - 10:53pm PT
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Dapper Dan: Re your question?
Forgive my ignorance: how could he just live on the land? Was he on BLM land ? Are there stay limits there ?
Did he purchase the land he built his shacks on ?
I don't know the details, but the time-honored method for "squaters" on Federal land in Idaho, was to file a mining claim. The 1886 mining laws predate the USFS & BLM, and although both agencies are now fairly aggressive about vacation-cabin mines, it was less regulated before the 1970's. Once you were established, it was damn-near impossible to get rid of you.
Some USFS Rangers in Idaho were quite aggressive in the 1970's about burning down un-occupied cabins on mining claims as "fire-hazards." This "un-official" policy started when "hippies" were starting to occupy old mining claims.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Sep 18, 2013 - 11:35pm PT
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fritz...the green gestapo used the same tactics around here to chase the freaks out of old mining cabins...burn em if you got em...
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