Old Whitebird Grade Road

Some maps show that the upper half of Whitebird Grade Road is open. It’s not really, and it looks to be a gated-off gravel road now.

The lower half is a fantastic road, and I give it a two-thumbs up rating as a destination road.

This road has history behind it, as it’s a National Historic Area as it’s the site of the opening battle of the North Idaho Nez Perce War in the mid-1800s. It’s also the only North-South road to traverse Idaho. There’s no other way through this geologic formation, and even this area is so tough that the original grade road had enough curves to form 37 complete circles if pieced together.

View down the White Bird valley

Down at the bottom of the grade is the little hamlet of White Bird. I’m sure it’s a sleepy little town of 150 most of the time, but this Father’s Day weekend it was full of people attending the Whitebird Rodeo.

Also, watch the weather here on this grade. I discovered that it can be in the mid to low-60s in Grangeville and be in the lower 80s in WhiteBird. Every time I got to the bottom I was peeling layers off, only to want them on again 2000 feet up at the top of the road 15-20 minutes later.

View from the top at nearly 3800 feet.

Just be careful of the road surface on Old Whitebird. The shoulder gravel is the exact same color as the pavement and can slide the back end out real fast.

  • Counties: Idaho
  • Length: 18 miles
  • Towns: Grangeville, White Bird

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Adventure, Idaho, Twisties | July 4th, 2007

2 Comments

  1. Grumbler Says:
    December 14th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    Due to the decaying condition of Old Whitebird Grade Rd, we’ve stayed on US-95 btw Whitebird and Grangeville. We were looking forward to stopping at the Whitebird Cafe, but a chartered bus was disgorging tourists that day so we decided to kept going.

  2. Mike Brown Says:
    September 23rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    My buddy and I did the Old White Bird Grade on Sept 9th, 2008.  We did not see any other vehicles at all.  The curves are pretty spectacular, especially near the top where you can look down into the valley and see all the switchbacks.  At this time of year the valley is pretty dry, brown and hazy, so I imagine May or June would be more scenic.

    The Old WB road joins with Hwy 95 for about 100 yards, which sort of divides the Old WB into an upper and lower section.  The upper section goes through a forest,  has a few homes and is in better condition.

    The lower road is in good shape, but received a chip-seal treatment in the not too distant pass.  It looks like the Hwy Dept forgot to sweep off the excess gravel, so even in the middle of the road there is just enough loose gravel to make you slow down a bit.  There doesn’t seem to be enough regular traffic to remove the gravel.  It is very small and round, like little ball bearings.  Not trying to scare everyone, just be careful and don’t expect to do any racing.

    This is also a free range area as evidenced by the many cow pies on the pavement.  We did see a few longhorn steers wandering around, but not right on the road.

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