Richard Zimmerman, known to all as Dugout Dick, dies in his cave age 94 – R.I.P.
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Known to some as the "Salmon River Caveman," but to most as “Dugout Dick”, Richard Zimmerman lived a lifestyle that was essentially a 19th century one. He was a digital-age anachronism who never owned a telephone or a television and lived almost entirely off the land.
Few knew people him by his given name of Richard Zimmerman. To friends and visitors to his jumble of cave-like homes scrabbled from a rocky shoulder of the Salmon River, he was simply Dugout Dick.
Dugout Dick 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 of them, just like Zimmerman, came from some place else. They were 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 himself was featured in National Geographic magazine but refused repeated invitations to appear on the "Tonight Show."
Zimmerman's metamorphosis 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 and though he never intended 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 and he walked out and hitchhiked home after having been moved by a friend to a care center in Salmon at age 93 because he was in failing health.
People say that he was the only person they have ever known who was absolutely self-sufficient. He didn't work for anybody. He worked for himself. And, as far as he was concerned, he needed little or nothing.
An era has passed and we are the poorer for it.
© 2010
