Joe Skelton, Survivor

A Bingham County resident in the 1870s may have been acquainted with a freighter named Joe Skelton. If so, their meeting was likely memorable, as he was considerably disfigured due to an encounter with an ox in 1874. The ox, a barely broken member of one of his teams, caught him in the throat with a horn that severed his windpipe, went through his jaw and tore his face clear to his eye.

Skelton would recover after several months in the hospital, after which he continued freighting on the Corinne to Salmon Route and sometimes the Blackfoot-Ketchum run. Like most freighters, he ran into more misfortune, being attacked at Houston by Indians in 1878 in an event that ended up with one man dead and was part of a brief war with the Shoshone-Bannocks.

Below is a lengthy account of that skirmish:

If you're not too queasy, here's a complete account, simultaneously revolting and fascinating, of Skelton's disfigurement and how he dealt with it.

Skelton, perhaps due to a dropoff in the freighting trade or being wary of meeting disaster in it, took up mining, but there, too, encountered excitement. In 1886, going down a shaft at the Montana Copper Mine with two other workers, the engineer of the elevator lost braking and the men rapidly dropped 110 feet to the bottom of the shaft. All survived, though were wobbly for days.

Skelton died five years later at the age of 52.