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.
