USA > Idaho > History of Idaho, the gem of the mountains, Volume I > Part 68
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In 1883 Mr. Wardwell caused a townsite of forty acres to be platted and two years later the independent school district of Emmettsville was established, with Douglas Knox, J. M. Martin and David Murray as the first board of trustees. The village was incorporated under the name of "Emmett" in 1900 and experi- enced its first boom in 1902, when the railroad was built through the valley. In 1909 the village government gave way to that of a city of the second class and in 1910 the railroad between Emmett and New Plymouth was completed.
The population of Emmett in 1910 was 1,351 and in 1918 it was estimated at 2,000. More fruit is shipped from Emmett than from any other point in Idaho, nearly fifteen thousand acres of land in the immediate vicinity being planted to orchards. The city has two banks, two weekly newspapers, a can- ning factory, a fruit drier, large mercantile interests, sawmills, electric light and waterworks, four public school buildings, church organizations of all the leading denominations, and the supervisor of the Payette National Forest has his office here. When Gem County was created in 1915 Emmett was made the county seat.
GENESEE
In the southwestern part of Latah County, on the Northern Pacific Railroad, is the thriving little City of Genesee. Its history dates from May, 1888, when it was made the terminus of the Palouse branch of the Northern Pacific, the first house in the town having been erected by J. S. Larabee only a short time before. Being located in a rich agricultural section, Genesee is an important shipping point for grain, live stock and fruit. It has two banks, two flour mills, a weekly newspaper which was established in 1889, when the city was only about a year old, several churches, a good public school system, lodges of the leading fra- ternal societies and is a supply point for a large part of the Lower Potlatch Val- ley. The population in 1910 was 742.
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GRANGEVILLE
At the beginning of the year 1874 the site of Grangeville, the county seat of Idaho County, was a pasture on the farm of John M. Crooks, who settled there in 1865. In the early summer of 1874 a son of the missionary, Rev. Henry H. Spalding, came to the Camas Prairie to organize a grange. The country was then sparsely settled, but a few of the pioneers met in a schoolhouse near Mount Idaho in July and organized Charita Grange, with William C. Pearson as mas- ter, J. H. Robinson as secretary, and a charter membership of sixteen. In 1876 the members of the grange built a hall on the farm of Mr. Crooks, who was one of the members, and who assisted in the erection of the hall. Mr. Crooks died in 1884. During the winter preceding the building of the hall, a company was organized with a capital stock of $25,000 to build a flour mill. The milling ma- chinery was hauled from Walla Walla in wagons and in the fall of 1876 the "Grange Mill" began grinding wheat. It was afterward sold to Vollmer & Scott.
Soon after the mill was completed, William Hill opened a general store, then came a miners' outfitting store, and A. F. Parker established a newspaper --- the Idaho County Free Press. In an early issue of this paper the editor said : "Grange- ville already possesses the attributes of a place ten times as populous, viz., a high school, a resident minister of the Methodist persuasion, a brass band and other indications of culture and refinement."
A bank was established in 1892 and about the same time a movement was started to make Grangeville the county seat of Idaho County. A petition to that effect was filed with the judge of the district court, who ordered a special election, at which Grangeville received 470 votes and the opposition polled 375. The project therefore failed for want of the necessary two-thirds of the total vote cast. On January 17, 1898, a meeting was held and a new contest was dis- cussed. At that time Florence was considered as too formidable a rival to be defeated and the people of Grangeville contented themselves with incorporating the town. The first election was held in October of that year and resulted in the choice of Henry Wax, W. W. Brown, A. F. Freidenrich, E. C. Sherwin and W. F. Schmadeka as the first board of trustees.
Shortly after the incorporation the rich discoveries of gold at Buffalo Hump changed the atmosphere of Grangeville to one of greater prosperity than the town had ever before enjoyed. New business enterprises multiplied, waterworks were established, bringing the supply from the mountain streams and it has long been the boast of Grangeville that she has the purest water in the state, a volun- teer fire department was organized and equipped, a fine hotel erected, a lime- kilns, brickyards and a brewery were established, etc. In 1902 the question of locating the county seat at Grangeville was again submitted to the people of Idaho County, with the result that Grangeville received 2,637 votes to 943 for all opponents. With the removal of the county seat the village government was abandoned and the city was incorporated. The Northern Pacific Railroad was com- pleted to Grangeville in 1908, the first passenger train arriving there on the 9th of December. The population in 1910 was 1,534. The city is furnished with electric light and power by the plant on the Clearwater River five miles southeast of the city, which also furnishes electric current to other towns in the vicinity.
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HAILEY
In 1879 John Hailey, now librarian of the Idaho State Historical Society, entered the land on which the City of Hailey, the county seat of Blaine County now stands. In the spring of 1881 Mr. Hailey, J. H. Boomer, W. T. Riley and E. S. Chase, then United States marshal, platted a town and gave it the name of "Marshall," but it was soon afterward changed to "Hailey."
Among the early settlers was Simon J. Friedman, who opened a general store in a tent 20 by 40 feet soon after the town was laid out. The following fall he erected a building for his store and in order to make it fireproof he cov- ered it with about a foot of earth, over which he placed a roof to turn the snow and rain. Another early merchant was H. Z. Burkhart, whose store was opened in May, 1881, in a tent made of two bolts of muslin, one of which was pur- chased in Ketchum and the other in Bellevue. It is said that when Mr. Burk- hart opened his first box of goods he gave the box to Frank A. Harding, pub- lisher of the Miner at Bellevue, to make a bedstead. Mr. Burkhart was the first posmaster at Hailey, and also the town's first justice of the peace. In 1882 he burned a kiln of 80,000 bricks and several brick buildings were erected, among them the courthouse, public school building and the railroad station, the Ketchum division of the Oregon Short Line being then under construction. The first train on this branch arrived at Hailey on May 23, 1883. Telegraph service was installed at the same time and in the autumn of that year the first telephones were introduced.
At the time the town was platted it was in Alturas County, the county seat of which was at Rocky Bar (now in Elmore County). In the spring of 1882 it became apparent the people of Alturas County were anxious to remove the county seat to some point in the Wood River mining region, and at the ensuing election Hailey defeated Bellevue for the honor, and when Blaine County was created in 1895, Hailey was designated as the county seat of that county.
When Hailey was two years old it claimed a population of 2,500. With the exhaustion of the ore bodies in the vicinity all the towns of the Wood River country suffered a decline, but Hailey, by being the county seat, retained more of its prestige than the others. In 1910 the population was 1,231. About a year before that census was taken Hailey was incorporated as a city. It has two banks, two daily newspapers, electric light and waterworks, a good public school system and a number of churches and lodges. It is the principal supply point for many of the stockmen in the Sawtooth national forest, and ships large numbers of sheep and large quantities of wool every year.
IDAHO FALLS
In 1864 Harry Ricketts established a ferry across the Snake River a few miles above the present City of Idaho Falls. Near this ferry was a large rock in the middle of the stream, where a family of American eagles made their nest every year, and from this coincidence the ferry was named the "Eagle Rock Ferry." The first year Mr. Ricketts operated this ferry he took in over thirty thousand dollars in greenbacks in tolls from wagons bound for Montana, but as greenbacks were then at a discount he realized only about half that amount in gold dust-then the current money of the West. For many years the scales used
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by Mr. Ricketts for weighing gold dust were in the possession of the Anderson Brothers Bank of Idaho Falls.
James M. Taylor and Robert Anderson obtained a charter from the Territorial Legislature of Idaho in 1865 to build a toll bridge over the Snake River at Black Rock Canyon, where the City of Idaho Falls now stands. This bridge was opened in the spring of 1866 and its builders in order to get the necessary iron bolts, paid $150 for an old freight wagon merely to get the iron it contained. The ferry people moved down to the bridge when it was finished, bringing the name of "Eagle Rock" with them. A small dwelling was built of driftwood for the toll keeper, a blacksmith shop and a small store were constructed of some boards and the timbers of an old ferry boat and thus the station of Eagle Rock was started.
When the Utah & Northern Railroad was completed in 1881 Eagle Rock was made a division point and the repair shops of the railroad company were located there. The growth of the town was then more rapid than it had been before and the improvements made were of a more substantial character. The first school was taught in the summer of 1882 by Mrs. Rebecca Mitchell, a Baptist missionary teacher from Hoopeston, Ill., and a Baptist Church was formed about the same time. The Latter-day Saints also organized a church.
The railroad shops were removed to Pocatello in 1887, but the loss was largely counteracted by the construction of irrigation projects and the bringing into cultivation of the lands in the vicinity. In 1890 the name of the town was changed to Idaho Falls, from the rapids in the Snake River. It was at this place that Captain Bonneville had to let his boats down by ropes held by men on the shore. At the head of these rapids a diversion dam has been constructed and it is here the municipal plant derives its power for lighting the city. The water supply also comes from this source. A mile below the city is the plant of the Utah Light and Power Company, which furnishes electric current to a number of towns in the Snake River Valley.
When Bonneville County was erected in 1911, Idaho Falls was made the county seat. It is situated northwest of the center of the county, on the east bank of the Snake River, and at the junction of the main line and Yellowstone Park division of the Oregon Short Line Railroad. Its population in 1910 was 4,827 and in 1918 it was estimated at 7,000. Idaho Falls has four banks, three news- papers (one a daily), a beet sugar factory, two flour mills, a pressed brick plant, three grain elevators, a public library, a paid fire department, a creamery, fine public parks, a postoffice building, an auditorium erected by the Latter-day Saints at a cost of $30,000, modern public school buildings and many handsome residences. Large quantities of potatoes, seeds and honey are shipped from here every year.
KELLOGG
The original plat of Kellogg was filed on July 7, 1893, by Robert Horn, Jonathan Ingalls, John M. Burke, Alfred Brile, Thomas Hanley, John A. Martin, Jr., Charles Sinclair and Jacob Goetz, and was at first known as "Milo." The next year the name was changed to "Kellogg," in honor of N. S. Kellogg, who discovered the Bunker Hill mine. Kellogg is situated in the central part of Shoshone County, on the Coeur d'Alene River and the line of the Oregon- Washington Railroad & Navigation Company. The reduction works of most of the mining companies among mines near Wardner, are situated here. It was
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incorporated in 1907, and in May, 1913, was organized as a city of the sec- ond class; has two banks, two newspapers, a commercial club, a smelter, electric light and waterworks, churches of several leading denominations, hotels, stores, and large mining interests. The population in 1910 was 1,273.
LEWISTON
Situated on the point of land between the Snake and Clearwater rivers, and sheltered on the north by the great cliffs of the Palouse plateau, is the City of Lewiston, the county seat of Nez Perce County and the oldest city in Idaho. The discovery of gold in the Clearwater country in the spring of 1861 brought a rush of miners and prospectors and by the middle of June some sagacious individuals saw that the junction of the Clearwater and Snake rivers was the most suitable place for a town, which they decided to call Lewiston, in honor of Capt. Meriwether Lewis, one of the first white men to explore the country. In October permission was obtained from the territorial authorities of Washington to lay out the town, though for some time before that Lewiston had been doing a thriving business and pack trains left almost every day for the "diggings." By the spring of 1862 the place boasted of being a regular city, with mercantile establishments, hotels, gambling houses, churches, etc. On March 3, 1861, the steamboat Colonel Wright arrived at Lewiston, being the first steamboat to ascend the Snake River to that point.
The Territory of Idaho was created by Act of Congress on March 3, 1863, and Governor William H. Wallace designated Lewiston as the place where the first session of the Legislature should meet on December 7, 1863. The next session passed an act removing the territorial capital to Boise, and this, with the decline in the mining boom, left Lewiston to its natural advantages and resources, which proved sufficient to make the ctiy a permanent institution. Being at the head of navigation on the Snake River, its strategic position makes it the natural gateway for commerce and large quantities of grain, livestock, lumber, etc., are shipped from here annually to the Pacific coast.
Lewiston was one of the first independent school districts in the Territory of Idaho and erected a school building at a cost of $11,000, the first good school building in Idaho. A United States land office was established here in 1875 and two banks were organized in 1883. Within a few years after that date Lewiston was an important jobbing center, the wholesale firms of the city employing over forty traveling salesmen. It is now the commercial metropolis and distributing center for a large territory and boasts the largest wholesale grocery and the largest wholesale drug house in the state. In addition to its large jobbing interests, Lewiston has two flour mills, foundries, machine shops, large lumbering interests, two box factories, a creamery, two canning factories, an ice factory and cold storage plant, four banks, two daily and one weekly news- papers, electric light, gas, waterworks, a Carnegie library, the State Normal School, a State Law Library housed in a building of its own, a modern hospital, fine public parks, an excellent public school system and extensive retail mercan- tile interests.
Just across the Snake River is Clarkston, Wash., the two cities being con -. nected by an electric railway. The Lewiston-Clarkston School of Horticulture, the only institution of its kind in the world, is located at Lewiston. All the
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leading religious denominations are represented in Lewiston and some of them have fine church buildings. The Masons, Odd Fellows, Elks and Knights of Pythias have commodious buildings and other fraternal organizations are well represented.
The transportation facilities are unsurpassed. The Northern Pacific, Lewis- ton, Nez Perce & Eastern and the Camas Prairie railroads all center at Lewis- ton and the last two have their headquarters there. In addition to the railway facilities, two lines of river steamers are operated between Lewiston and Port- land. The population of the ctiy in 1910 was 6,043 and in 1918 it was estimated at 8,000.
MONTPELIER
In April, 1864, fifteen families of Latter-day Saints came from Salt Lake City into the Bear Lake Valley for the purpose of founding a settlement and selected the site of Montpelier, now the commercial metropolis of Bear Lake County. At first, these pioneers lived in dugouts, covered with brush, some- of them sleeping at night in their wagons, but they soon built log cabins and being without lumber they floored their houses with prairie hay, the doors being merely cloths hung over the openings. A large coffee-mill was used for grind- ing corn, they had to go with ox teams seventy-five miles for their supplies, and during the winter season mail was brought in by men on snowshoes. Among these pioneers were John Cozzens, William Ervin, Jacob Jones, John Bunney, Edward Burgoyne, Christian Hoganson, William Severns and Charles H. Bridges. The settlement was first known as Clover Creek, then Belmont, but later Brig- ham Young, the head of the Mormon Church, visited the place and gave it the name of Montpelier, after the city in Vermont where he was born.
When the Oregon Short Line Railroad was built in 1883, the town took on a new growth and later was made a freight division point by the railroad company, and repair shops were located there. In 1910 the population was 1,924 and in 1918 it was estimated at 2,400. Montpelier has two banks, a weekly newspaper, a flour mill, a municipally owned waterworks, an electric light plant, three public school buildings, good hotels, a public library, an opera house, a number of well stocked mercantile establishments, and the little log cabins of the pioneers, with their hay floors and "bed-quilt" doors, have been replaced by modern residences. The railroad men have a fine club house and the com- pany disburses about thirty thousand dollars every month to its employes. The railroad company also maintains stock yards here, where all live stock shipped over the Oregon Short Line are unloaded, fed and permitted to rest before being reloaded. The postoffice distributes mail to a number of the surrounding towns and auto-stage lines connect the outlying towns with the railroad at Mont- pelier.
MOSCOW
A few years after the close of the Civil war, two adventurers named Trim- bell and Haskins built a small "shack" where the City of Moscow now stands, but after occupying it for a short time left the country. In March, 1871, the shanty was taken possession of by Asbury Lieuallen, who lived there until he could build a cabin on his homestead, which he selected in the Paradise Valley,
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about three miles farther east. At that time the nearest settlement was at Lewiston, about thirty miles to the southward. During the next three years a number of settlers came into the valley, among them being William Ewing, John and Bart Niemyer, James Deakin, William Taylor, James Howard and his brother, Reuben Cox, James Montgomery, Henry McGregor, Thomas Tierney, John Neff and John Russell. John Neff settled on a tract of land where the city was afterward located.
In 1872 a mail route was opened between Lewiston and the settlements north and Paradise postoffice was established about a mile east of Moscow. The mail was carried on horseback by Major Winpey. At the urgent request of his neighbors, who had grown tired of going to Lewiston for their supplies, Mr. Lieuallen agreed in May, 1875, to open a store at some convenient point in the settlement. Purchasing a portion of John Neff's land he erected a little one story building, on the west side of what afterward became Main Street, and brought a small stock of "necessities" from Walla Walla in wagons, over what was known as "Dr. Baker's Rawhide Road." W. G. Emery, writing of this first store in Moscow in 1897, said: "Two ordinary wagon-boxes would have held his entire stock in the store, but the prevailing prices made up in size for the smallness of the stock. Five pounds of flour sold for one dollar, brown sugar was fifty cents a pound, common butts and screws were fifty cents per pair and everything else in proportion. But at Lewiston prices were infinitely worse."
The Paradise postoffice was removed to Lieuallen's store in 1877 and the name was changed to Moscow. Mr. Lieuallen was appointed the first post- master and the shoe box in which he kept the mail was preserved for many years as one of the relics of the town's early history. About the time the postoffice was removed, John Benjamin put up a cheap frame structure and opened a blacksmith shop. That summer occurred the uprising of Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce Indians. Although the worst depredations were committed near Grangeville and Mount Idaho, nearly seventy-five miles farther south, the people of Moscow were afraid the Coeur d'Alene Indians might join Chief Joseph and make raids on the settlements. They therefore built a stock- ade, hauling the logs from the hills about six miles distant, and some thirty settlers with their families occupied the "fort" until the danger was past.
Moscow's first schoolhouse was built in 1878 and the first term of school was taught in the fall of that year by Robert H. Barton, who came to the town the year before and set up a sawmill. Mr. Barton was one of the most active of the pioneers in building up the town. In 1881 he .built the Barton Hotel, which was destroyed by fire in 1890, when he erected the Moscow Hotel at a .cost of about thirty-five thousand dollars. He also served as postmaster under the administrations of Harrison and Mckinley.
A Baptist Church was organized on August 6, 1876, at the Paradise Valley schoolhouse by Rev. S. E. Stearns and in 1878 a church building was erected in Moscow, the first in the town. About the same time the first large mercan- tile house-McConnell, Maguire & Company-built a store on the corner of Second and Main streets and put in a $50,000 stock of goods. W. J. McConnell of this firm was afterward governor of Idaho. The last Territorial Legislature (1888-89) passed an act to establish the University of Idaho at Moscow.
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In 1910 the population of Moscow was 3,670, being then the eighth city of the state. It has three banks, one daily newspaper, two weekly newspapers, three public school buildings and a high school building erected a few years ago at a cost of $85,000, a large flour mill, a brick and cement block factory, a well equipped packing plant, large lumber interests, a vinegar factory, and the Idaho harvester is manufactured here. Three lines of railroad-the Northern Pacific, the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company, and the Spo- kane & Inland Empire-furnish transportation in all directions, and the Mos- cow merchants supply the people over a large part of the rich Palouse country.
NAMPA
Nampa, situated in the eastern part of Canyon County, is known as the "Junc- tion City," on account of its great railway interests. It is on the main line of the Oregon Short Line and is the terminus of three branches of that system, one running to Boise, one to Murphy, in Owyhee County, and one to Lakeport, in Valley County. It has fifteen miles of sidings and storage tracks, with coal- ing facilities for locomotives, water-tanks and repair shops, and is the head- quarters for the train dispatchers and division officials. It is also connected with Boise by an electric line, and an electric line runs to Caldwell.
The main line of the railroad was built in 1883 as far as Caldwell and a small station was established at Nampa, but the town was not founded until two years later, when Alexander Duffes, passing through on his way to his old home in Canada, saw the possibilities of the place as a location for a town. He obtained 160 acres of Government land near the little railway station and platted part of it in town lots, setting aside a site for a schoolhouse and building the first residence. On November 11, 1885, he and his family moved into their new house, the first to settle in Nampa. Other early settlers and business men were: Benjamin Walling, John E. Stearns and B. Grumbling. Col. W. H. Dewey also contributed in no small degree to Nampa's prosperity in its early days by projecting the railroad from that place to Murphy and building the Dewey Palace Hotel, which is still one of the noted hostelries of the state, Nampa's wide awake commercial club, etc.
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