Salmon, Idaho

Name: Salmon, Idaho
Address: Salmon, ID

Everything Salmon is known for

1 song mention this city

RoadyGoat plays music like this when you drive through Salmon. It's free on iPhone, and full songs play through Apple Music.

Music in Salmon

Songs About Salmon

Montana Café

Hank Williams, Jr.

"I am way out here on the Idaho line"

Artists From Salmon

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Salmon

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Salmon.

Salmon River 5 songs

History of Salmon

Named After a Goblin RoadyGoat

1500

The word cobalt comes from kobold, a German term for a goblin or gremlin. Around the year 1500, miners in the Saxon mountains kept hitting an ore that looked rich and silvery but betrayed them. It would not smelt into useful metal, and worse, roasting it released poisonous arsenic fumes that sickened the workers. Convinced a mischievous underground spirit was spoiling their silver, the miners blamed the goblin, the kobold, and the name stuck to the cursed rock. For centuries cobalt was a nuisance, not a prize. Only in 1735 did Swedish chemist Georg Brandt isolate it and prove it was a brand new metal in its own right, not a wrecked version of something else. He kept the goblin name. So this element is, quite literally, named for a folklore monster.

16.9 mi away

What Powers Your Phone RoadyGoat

The same metal that names this old mining town is now one of the most fought-over materials on Earth, because it helps run your phone. Cobalt is a key ingredient in the cathode, the positive side, of most rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. It gives those batteries two prized traits, packing in a lot of energy and resisting overheating, which keeps them stable and safe. That's why a metal that medieval miners once cursed is now in huge demand. Smartphones, laptops, and especially electric cars all lean on it, and roughly half the cobalt mined worldwide goes into rechargeable batteries. A century ago, Idaho's Blackbird district pulled cobalt out of these hills with no real idea it would one day help power a device that fits in your pocket. The goblin metal became a battery metal.

17.1 mi away

The Metal Inside a Vitamin RoadyGoat

Here is a fact that surprises almost everyone. Vitamin B12 has a single cobalt atom sitting right at its center. That makes B12 the only vitamin that contains a metal atom at all. Its other name, cobalamin, even comes from the cobalt inside it. The metal sits cradled in a ring-shaped molecule, a bit like the way iron sits at the heart of the red pigment in your blood. That one cobalt atom is what lets B12 do its job, helping your body build red blood cells and keep your nerves working properly. So the same element that miners once blamed on goblins, the metal that names a ghost town in Idaho, is also a quiet, essential passenger riding around inside your own body right now.

17.2 mi away

Everything Near Salmon

8 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Salmon, ID · 0.5 mi · Wikipedia
This place holds echoes of a monumental journey. The famous Lewis and Clark Expedition passed through here, crossing the Continental Divide just southeast of town at Lemhi Pass. They then followed the Salmon River,…
Leesburg, Idaho · 11.2 mi · Scraped Hmdb
Once a bustling gold rush town, Leesburg is now a near-ghost town, a haunting reminder of boom and bust in the Old West. Gold was discovered here in 1866, and within a few years, Leesburg became a thriving mining…
Named After a Goblin · 16.9 mi
The word cobalt comes from kobold, a German term for a goblin or gremlin. Around the year 1500, miners in the Saxon mountains kept hitting an ore that looked rich and silvery but betrayed them. It would not smelt into…
What Powers Your Phone · 17.1 mi
The same metal that names this old mining town is now one of the most fought-over materials on Earth, because it helps run your phone. Cobalt is a key ingredient in the cathode, the positive side, of most rechargeable…
The Metal Inside a Vitamin · 17.2 mi
Here is a fact that surprises almost everyone. Vitamin B12 has a single cobalt atom sitting right at its center. That makes B12 the only vitamin that contains a metal atom at all. Its other name, cobalamin, even comes…
The Town Named for a Metal · 17.2 mi
Cobalt, Idaho, is a tiny, mostly ghost mining town tucked into the mountains of Lemhi County, west of Salmon. It takes its name straight from the rock under its feet. The nearby Blackbird Mine district holds one of the…
The Oldest Blue · 17.4 mi
Long before anyone knew cobalt was a metal, people were using it to make the color blue. Cobalt glass turns up in ancient Mesopotamia around four thousand years ago, and cobalt blue colored Egyptian glass and pottery…
First Flag Unfurling Site, Lewis and Clark Trail · 18.8 mi · Scraped Hmdb
Imagine standing here with Lewis and Clark, witnessing a silent claim to this vast, new territory. This is the First Flag Unfurling Site. On 1805, after crossing the Continental Divide, Lewis encountered two Native…

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