Generations of kids grew up dreaming of becoming a cowboy in the romantic Old West. On TV or on the silver screen, the cowboy life was always presented as a life with strong morals. Men were strong and women virtuous.… Read More >

Oakley stone is the trade name of a building stone that occurs in the mountains south of Oakley. More properly known as Rocky Mountain quartzite or Idaho quartzite, Oakley stone is a metamorphic rock, which means it was once in… Read More >

Much of the Intermountain West was settled by homesteaders, who claimed their claims to land from the federal government in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But settlers needed water. Flood irrigation demanded massive amounts of water be delivered throughout… Read More >

In the fall of 1907 State Engineer D.W. Ross and other officials suddenly took note of the fact that the Southside pumping project was in danger of losing its water right. Idaho law stated that a person or organization holding… Read More >

John Richard “Jack” Simplot, born in Dubuque, Iowa, January 4, 1909, was only a year old when he arrived with his family in Burley.  In about 1923, when Jack Simplot was fourteen years old, he graduated from the eighth grade,… Read More >

By 1942 the United States needed places to house German and Italian prisoners. Government officials  decided to construct prisoner-of-war camps in rural areas so that the prisoners could provide manual labor to local farms. One camp was located about four… Read More >

“Anyone living in the United States during the mid-twentieth century would have heard about the African adventures of Tarzan. From the time the first story, ‘Tarzan of the Apes,’ was published in 1912 until the movie, ‘Tarzan and the Jungle… Read More >

Grains and hay were the main crops on the Minidoka Project, as they were in other parts of Cassia County. In 1915 the alfalfa crop was nearly 40 percent of the value of all crops that were raised…   But Minidoka… Read More >

Japanese-Americans from Washington and Oregon were sent to a center in Idaho. Officially named the Minidoka Relocation Center—a confusing name since it was located in Jerome County and not in Minidoka County—it was locally known as the Hunt Camp.* The… Read More >

In 1872 a twenty-three-year-old plant breeder named Luther Burbank found a single seed ball growing on the vine of one of his Early Rose potatoes. Because Burbank had tried without success to produce an improved potato, he watched the seed… Read More >