USA > Idaho > Bannock County > The history of Bannock County, Idaho > Part 7
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During recent years Christian Sci-
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ence has becoe firmly established in Pocatello.
Other among the city's public in- stitutions are the Carnegie Public Library and the Pocatello General Hospital.
In addition to her public school system, of which Supt. W. R. Siders is the head, Pocatello is the seat of the Academy of Idaho, a state insti- tution created by the legislature of 1901, and opened for instruction in 1902. The city gave ten acres as a site for the Academy, and in 1905 the state gave the institution forty thou- sand acres of land, the sale of which will provide an endowment. The work of the Academy is largely along tech- nical lines, and for the use of the agricultural department a hundred- acre farm has been purchased just south of the city. Miles F. Reed is president of the Academy, which has about three hundred students.
Standing sentinel over the city, towering above it to the south, and doubtless protecting it from many a wind and storm, is Kinport's peak. Harry Kinport, for whom this moun- tain was named, is now dead, but he was well known in Pocatello a few years ago, and is supposed to have been the first white man to climb the mountain. He signalized his feat by planting a flag there. Kinport was a business man in Pocatello for several (134)
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years, coming to the town in 1885. He was always a great hunter and fisherman, and when President Roose- velt visited the city, caught a mess of trout and presented them to the visitor.
There is every reason to hope that Pocatello will have a population of over 20,000 before the next census. Its facilities as a distributing point are attracting many manufacturing and merchandise companies, who are building warehouses, and the fact that the Oregon Short Line railroad has built a freight depot to handle the traffic of a town of 50,000 population, shows that the management of that line expects a big growth.
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CHAPTER XII.
CONCLUSION.
There are twenty-three counties in the state of Idaho, of which sixteen have a smaller and six a larger popu- lation than Bannock, while twelve counties have a smaller area and ten a larger. Therefore, Bannock is one of the larger counties of the state. This position she has creditably maintained in both the number and the quality of her public men, of whom several were mentioned in the last chapter.
Others who deserve mention here are former State Senators Ruel Rounds, George C. Parkinson, Louis S. Keller, John B. Thatcher, George H. Fisher and W. H. Mendenhall, our present senator, and former State Representatives William A. Walker, Robert V. Cozier, L. R. Thomas, William McGee Harris, Denmark Jen- sen, W. H. Lovesy, Edward L. Holz- heimer, Thomas M. Edwards, John Schutt, C. W. Dempster, W. H. Men- denhall and C. W. Gray, D. J. Lau and D. J. Elrod, the county's present representatives.
Many of these men have been re- turned to office several times, J. Frank Hunt, of Downey, having rep- (136)
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resented the county either as sena- tor or representative continuously since 1900, with the exception of one term of office. In 1900, Thomas Ter- rell was elected lieutenant governor of the state, and in 1908, James H. Brady, of Pocatello, present United States senator for Idaho, was re- turned as governor.
Senator Brady was born in Indiana county, Pennsylvania, June 12, 1862, but was taken to Kansas by his parents in early boyhood, where he was educated in the State Normal College. He taught school for three years, fitted himself for the profes- sion of law, edited a semi-weekly newspaper for two years, and then became interested in the real estate business. In time he was operating successful offices in St. Louis, Chi- cago and Houston, Texas. The irri- gation and power possibilities of Ida- ho attracted him to this state in 1895, when he became identified with the development of the Snake river val- ley, the Idaho, Marysville and Fort Hall canals being among the projects in which he was active. He has been a leading factor in the electrical de- velopment of southeastern Idaho, the Idaho Consolidated Power company, at American Falls, being one of his useful and successful enterprises.
Although a man with large private interests that demanded much time
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and attention, Senator Brady has been an active and ruling figure in the Republican party in Idaho for several years. In 1900 he was a dele- gate to the Republican national con- vention and in 1908 he was a mem- ber of the committee sent by the con- vention to notify William H. Taft of his nomination for the presidency of the United States. He was vice- president of the National Irrigation Congress in 1896 and 1898, and a member of its executive committee from 1900 until 1904. The senator has always represented his constitu- ents efficiently and well and in re- turn enjoys their personal good-will and loyalty.
It was Senator Brady who made possible the "Western Governors' Special," a railway train which toured the east in 1911 in what proved to be a very successful attempt to forge closer the links that bind the east and west, and to demonstrate by exhibits carried on the train that the sums expended by the United States government for the reclamation of arid western lands were wisely in- vested. The governors of Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Ne- vada, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota and Minnesota accom- panied the train, each in his own car. The expedition, which has been justly termed "one of the most (138)
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unique incidents in the annals of publicity," was entertained at din- ner in the White House at Washing- ton by President Taft.
Among the men who played import- ant parts in developing Bannock county, is the late Henry O. Hark- ness, who founded the town of Mc- Cammon, which formerly bore his name.
Mr. Harkness was born in Nor- walk, Ohio, in 1838, and as a young man learned the rade of machinist. When the Civil war broke out, he en- listed in the Washburn Lead-Mine regiment and attained the rank of captain before he was honorably dis- charged from the service in 1865. The following year he left Atchison, Kan- sas, with an outfit of four wagons and ten oxen, and crossed the plains to the Madison valley in Montana. Here he engaged in stock-raising but a se- ver- winter killed most of his cattle, and in the spring of 1867 he moved south into Idaho. He spent three years in the northern part of the state and in 1870 settled in the Portneuf valley, where he once more raised stock. He was a man of unusual business sagacity, combining shrewd foresight with an ingenuity that de- fied defeat, and he soon acquired both wealth and influence in the commu- nity. He was county commissioner of Oneida from 1874 until 1880. At (139)
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the time of his death in 1911, his estate consisted in part of seventeen hundred acres of land near McCam- mon, sixteen hundred acres in the vicinity of Oxford, the large H. O. Harkness hotel at MoCammon, which was a landmark in the county for several years but was destroyed by fire i 1913, the flour mill in McCam- mon, and several mammoth feed barns in the same town. Mr. Hark- ness was the first postmaster of Mc- Cammon and the first man in south- ern Idaho to own an electric light plant.
Another citizen of McCammon who is a factor in both the political and business life of the county is the Hon. Thomas M. Edwards, who, with his brothers Walter and Charles own the McCammon Investment company. Mr. Edwards was a member of the State House of Representatives from 1908 until 1910, and a member of the Republican state central committee for Bannock county in 1910 and 1911. Thomas Edwards was born in Yankton, S. D., in 1864. His father, Colonel Thomas H. Edwards, was a veteran of the civil war and his grandfather, Col. Jonathan Edwards, was a veteran of the Mexican war. Thomas Edwards settled in McCam- mon in 1900, being attracted to the town by the opportunities it offered. Since that time he has helped to or- (140)
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ganize the McCammon State Bank, of which he was formerly president, the McCammon Telephone company, the Portneuf - Marsh Valley Irrigation company, the Downey Townsite & De- velopment company, the Ferguson- Jenkins Drug company, of which Thomas Jenkins and Samuel Fergu- son are the present proprietors, and several other smaller enterprises.
The first permanent settlement in Bannock county was made in 1866, when a party of Latter Day Saints established themselves at what is now Malad City. Since that time most of the larger Christian denominations have carried their missionary work into the county, whose religious de- velopment unfortunately has been carried on principally by a succession of short ministries. In addition to the Rev. C. Van der Donckt, of whom some account has already been given, two men, however, have worked long and faithfully in building up the re- ligious life of the county. One of these is the Venerable Howard Stoy, an archdeacon of the Episcopal church, who, with headquarters in Pocatello, gives pastoral care to over twenty-five mission points, although not all of these are in Bannock coun- ty. His jurisdiction, indeed, covers a distance of more than two hundred miles westward from the Wyoming line, and in the course of his work
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he sometimes travels three thousand miles in a month. He has opened up many a town and hamlet to churchly influence and has conducted services at points that had never known a Christian service until his coming. Such men, above all others, are con- tributing to both the present and future upbuilding of the community, and to them is all honor due. Mr. George Peacock, a missionary of the American Sunday School association of Philadelphia, is another man who is sacrificing all worldly interests in order to carry Christian instruction to children who must be without it, except for him. Mr. Peacock organ- izes undenominational Sunday schools in places that have no church, these schools in time being taken over by the first church to establish itself in the town.
The principal occupations in the county at the present time are ranch- ing, stockraising and railroading. It is quite possible that mining will be added to these in years to come, and that manufacturing will soon be added to the list is a very safe pre- diction. The exceptional railroad fa- cilities, the abundant water power afforded by the rapid current of the Portneuf, and the conveniences of a city like Pocatello will offer strong inducements to manufacturers, as soon as the population of the sur- (142)
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rounding country is sufficiently great to offer a lucrative market.
The history of Bannock county is one of which her citizens may well be proud. It has been consistently progressive and healthy. The suffrage was granted to women in 1896, when the state of Idaho adopted woman's suffrage, and in 1911 the county ex- ercised its local option rights and voted for prohibition.
With the exception of the strike in the Oregon Short Line Railroad shops in Pocatello in 1911, when the shop- men walked out, there has been no really serious labor trouble in the annals of the county, and in the case of the strike in 1911, which is still unsettled, there was no violence nor rioting.
The history of Bannock county is a history of honest men and clean citizens. Its pages are unstained by any public scandal, or official dishon- esty, but, on the contrary, bear the records of an industrious and true- hearted race of men. The future of the county is promising and bright. The foundation of her development has been truly laid, and her command- ing commercial position, her abun- dant and fertile resources, her splen- did climate and her excellent railroad facilities insure a prosperity that few other communities can expect.
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